A Holistic Approach For Cultural Change: Character Education for Ages 13-15

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Marc Levitt's A Holistic Approach for Cultural Change: Character Education for Ages 13-15 asks educators to consider how our contemporary curriculum and pedagogy supports isolation and competition, rather than our goals for school culture change. Mr. Levitt explores themes such as 'vengeance,' 'prejudice,' 'communications in relationships,' 'trapping oneself in past behaviors,' 'respecting one's heritage,' and 'learning to embrace one's own story' through his original stories. Suggestions for curriculum and pedagogical changes follow, helping educators share the larger personal and social implications of Mr. Levitts stories, while teaching and demonstrating how we are All in it Together. A Holistic Approach for School-Based Culture Change: Character Education for Ages 13-15 helps educators build a caring and socially intelligent community of students in a way that is neither 'preachy' nor condescending, acknowledging and encouraging our mutuality of interests.

Reviews

Holistic Approach for School Based Culture Change: Character Education for Ages 13-15 uses stories to engage students on a variety of issues such a stereotyping that can lead to bullying. The stories include questions for students to consider along with suggestions for teachers on how they can stimulate further discussion and inquiry. I believe teachers will find this book very helpful in engaging students to discuss and reflect on important issues in their lives. -- John P. Miller, professor, The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto From the Foreword
Marc Levitt has created a useful resource for any educator who works with newly-minted teenagers inA Holistic Approach for Cultural Change: Character Education for Ages 13-15.With an increased focus on diversity, historical complexity, and contextualization in our school system and beyond, Levitt offers specific examples, strategies, and questions for teachers and students that will help start and continue challenging conversations. -- Hilary Levey Friedman, author of Playing to Win: Raising Children in a Competitive Culture
Restorative Justice in Education is grounded in the notion that we are all valued and interconnected. Eschewing the notion of rugged individualism that plagues our world, Marc uses his creative energy to design a resource for middle school educators who are wanting to build a more interconnected and restorative world. I see this resource as a great way to begin conversations about how we do that. May we all work to help the next generation do this better. -- Katherine Evans, teacher, educator, and author of The Little Book of Restorative Justice in Education
Marc Levitt offers a powerful new perspective on the complex pedagogical and curricular issues surrounding character education. With courage, clarity and conviction, Levitt pleads with us to understand that it is only in authentic concern for the wellbeing of others that one rises to ones full stature as a rich and authentic individual. This, he concludes, is the foundation upon which character education must be built if the schools are to play a vital role in helping us not only navigate the multiplicity of ethical visions and cultural constructs that now contentiously abound in the 21st century, but in turning that diversity into an opportunity for each to be edified and nurtured by each in a grand synthesis that, in Tennysons words, will empower us, individually and collectively, to seek a newer world. -- Clifford Mayes Ph.D, Psy.D, Retired Professor of Educational Psychology, BYU and author

Author Bio

Marc Levitt is an author/consultant/filmmaker/radio host and producer who has worked in over sixty countries. His films, Stories in Stone and Woven in Time have been seen on PBS and at film festivals around the United States and his radio show,Action Speaks, Underappreciated Dates that Changed America, has been broadcast on over 200 Public and Independent stations.