MANAGING EXCELLENCE

By,
Raghav Lahoti
A30301913045

1. What are the four key skills to excellence in ethics ?

The four key skills in developing performance character and moral character and help
gain more power in education efforts are:
a) An Ethical Learning Community: ELC is all about developing a community
that holds a group as one. It enhances group relationships, shared values that
focuses on excellence and ethics, fosters mutual understanding and holds all
group members accountable to doing their best work and being their best
ethical selves.
b) Self-Study: is ones own self-assessment in terms of strengths and weaknesses
and improve on the weaker areas, make the strengths stronger and setting
goals whose progress needs to be monitored constantly.
c) Other-study: Learning by observing others. Inculcate the positives learnt from
others and applying them in our own efforts to develop ones moral and
performance character. While learning from the negative examples of others
and not repeating the same mistakes in our life.
d) Public Presentation: Displaying ones efforts and goals achieved by sharing it
with a wider audience, automatically boosts ones self confidence and makes
others aware of your journey in striving for excellence.

2. Character is power. Explain?

Booker T. Washington said, Character is power. This statement talks about how ones
character can be the most powerful tool at ones disposal. Character can be built by
integrating excellence and ethics. That is by doing our best work (pursuit of excellence)
and doing the right thing in our relationships (pursuit of ethical behavior). To become a
person of character means to become the best person one can be. Our character reflects
in what we do and the way we behave and communicate with others. It can reveal more
than what meets the eye.
In order for students to build a strong character that combines good manners with a
sense to strive for excellence, it is now being implemented in educational institutions
too. Education has two main sole purposes, one is to help students become smart and
help them become good human beings. Both these goals require characteristic qualities
like self-discipline, confidence, diligence and determination that helps one to perform.
They are also termed as performance character that develop their talents, help them
strive for excellence and succeed in school and beyond.

3.Explain paradigm shift using the 4 keys?

The paradigm shift is to do with the field of character education and school reform in
general. Traditional schools focused on teaching students how to be both smart as well
as good. They have regarded this as a schools oldest mission and highest calling in
developing a student overall. However, today we see the shift in contemporary education
which neglects developing moral character and primarily focuses on increasing academic
achievement.
The paradigm shift can be explained using the 4 keys:
a) An ethical Learning Community: Students need to learn the importance of
working in teams, building relationships by helping each other out, share values
as a group, stay honest to their team and work thereby motivating them to
perform their best as a team and improve their ethical behavior when dealing
with a diverse group of people.
b) Self-study: This needs to be implemented in contemporary education as one
needs to know his own strengths and weaknesses before he/she sets foot into
this cut throat competitive world. It is important to set both personal goals as
well as professional goals in order to develop a powerful character.
c) Other-Study: This has proven to be extremely useful in education as
observations speak volumes. Learning through observations can teach one to
pick up the right or positive examples by implementing the same in their own
lives while not repeating the negative examples and avoiding the same.
d) Public Presentation: In order to gain more confidence in ones work, it is
important that students know how to share their experiences and efforts with a
wider audience. This can inspire others to follow from positives examples and
motivate one to push harder.

4. Explain how one can maximize the power of character of any

education practice.
The power of any educational practice can be maximized by implementing the four key
skills that integrate excellence and ethics, performance and moral character.
The four key skills in developing performance character and moral character and help
gain more power in education efforts are:
An Ethical Learning Community: ELC is all about developing a community that
holds a group as one. It enhances group relationships, shared values that focuses
on excellence and ethics, fosters mutual understanding and holds all group
members accountable to doing their best work and being their best ethical selves.
Self-Study: is ones own self-assessment in terms of strengths and weaknesses
and improve on the weaker areas, make the strengths stronger and setting goals
whose progress needs to be monitored constantly.

Other-study: Learning by observing others. Inculcate the positives learnt from

others and applying them in our own efforts to develop ones moral and
performance character. While learning from the negative examples of others
and not repeating the same mistakes in our life.
Public Presentation: Displaying ones efforts and goals achieved by sharing it
with a wider audience, automatically boosts ones self confidence and makes
others aware of your journey in striving for excellence.

5. Explain helping students taking responsibilities for their

grades.
This sentence is mainly given by teacher A who wants her students to take
responsibility for their grades and not blame anyone else. She wishes that her students
see their grades as something they earn and strive hard to earn them rather than see it
as the teacher giving marks. They should feel the pinch when they lose their rank by a
mark and learn to value even that one mark as it can affect their ranking. She has gone
an extra mile to try and help students take responsibility for their own grades by
implementing ELC, where the students pledged around six character traits namely:
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)

They will come prepared for class

They will complete and turn in assignments on time
Indulge in self-study
Evaluate their efforts
Create a plan for the future

She felt that the ELC needed more power enough to foster the level of academic
responsibility she wants them to have. As a result of this students can now know where
they lack and how they can make up for the lost grades by self-evaluation (Self-study).
Monitoring progress of self is equal to what companies do today, in order to monitor their
employees performance. This will imbibe in them a feeling of taking responsibility for
their own doing and not blame it on their tools.
If the students grades were low, they automatically understood that they needed to
learn the subject more and not think that their teacher was too strict in correction. If the
grades were good, all they needed to do was work on step 5 that talks about having a
clear plan for the future. It involved creating a SMART goal, one that is specific,
measureable, achievable, relevant and time bound. In order to get that extra push, they
needed to pick a role model that would help them in achieving that goal (Other study).
She says that it is always good for students to pick a mentor/coach who can guide them
in the right path by sharing goals with this person (public presentation). She made them
follow the 4 keys in order to make ELC more powerful and fruitful. The entire process also
integrates performance character and moral character where we see that students are
striving for their personal best by simultaneously working together to do their best. Thus,
the goal setting process can maximize the power of character and culture needed for
optimal teaching and learning.

6. How does teacher B maximize the power of character

quotation?
Teacher B in an effort to inspire his students to care about the quality of their work and
the way they treat other, begins his grade 8 health education classes with a character
quotation. For example, Everything can be taken from us except one thing-the
freedom to choose our attitude in any set of circumstances-Viktor Frankl. Like many
character educators, teacher B also uses character quotations to inspire his students.
Using the four key skills to excellence and ethics, teacher B can increase the power of
character quotations.
a) He can cultivate a shared sense of purpose: Quotations are a source of wisdom
that can help us make good choices. They come from people past and present and
from cultures around the world. They can be reflected upon and put to practice in
the students own life.
b) He can strengthen the use of Other-study by providing more biographical
information about the source of a given quote. A quote coupled with a glimpse into
the life of a character that lies behind the statement will intrigue the students
more.
c) He can then indulge the students in self-study thereby letting students to put
themselves in the shoes of the person whose quote inspires them the most. This
enables them to set personal goals.
d) Sharing the goal with a partner before the student retires to bed will allow them to
reflect on how well they did in terms of choosing the attitude in all circumstances
encountered on that day. This will also remove their stage fright if any and boost
their confidence tenfold when it comes to public speaking and making
presentations.