Many young people today are growing up without clear guidance about foundational character qualties that help all people succeed and make healthy choices. Throughout human history, these critical qualities have often been identified using the ancient term "wisdom," which WiseSkills defines as:
"Making good choices for myself and others"
WiseSkills was founded in 1994 as an interdisciplinary, teacher-friendly character education program that teaches young people wisdom and good character through three program strategies:
1. Modeling Teachers, parents, and community members model good character.
2. Teaching Educators and families teach good character and combine academic knowledge (what we KNOW) with wisdom (what we DO).
3. Reinforcing Schools and families together reinforce good character with schoolwide activities and meaningful service experiences.
The WiseSkills Vision
To effectively model, teach and reinforce principles of character that are critical for success, WiseSkills involves the three primary influences in young people's lives: School, Family, and Community.
• School WiseSkills features an interdisciplinary curricula that helps schools use a common language of character using schoolwide Character Themes and includes a variety of classroom resources to teach each theme, such as interdisciplinary activities,
character quotations, biographies, reproducible pages, role-plays, and other
materials. Schoolwide Implementation Kits include video training and administrator materials to help sustain and support the program schoolwide. The WiseSkillsschool resources are:
• Family The WiseSkills family materials engage families in simple, interactive home activities that teach and reinforce good character. Family Wisdom features
reproducible newsletters and activity pages that schools send home to involve families in their character education initiative. The Family Wisdom License Pack features training, licensing, and additional resources for facilitating the program schoolwide. Family materials include:
• Community WiseSkills can involve the local community with ongoing career speakers who model good character and regular service projects. Volunteers are trained and equipped to contact local organizations to arrange speakers and service projects in the community. Materials include: • Community Implementation Kit
