Character Education
A larger-than-life watercolor portrait in the theatre lobby of Girls Preparatory School illuminates the act of moral courage that brought the school into being. In this portrait are the three young teachers who in 1906 petitioned both public and private schools in Chattanooga to allow girls to complete college preparatory work. With refusals from both quarters, these visionaries scraped together $300 to begin a school for girls.
Today, the school has a comprehensive, intentional approach to character development. A National School of Excellence, GPS has won multiple Promising Practices Citations from the National Character Education Partnership. Believing that much is required of those to whom much has been given, GPS desires to develop good citizens with strong voices'voices that fill the school with their questions'often more questions than answers.
A conscious weaving of qualities of character through classroom and campus is a hallmark of a GPS education. The Middle School Character Committee meets monthly to plan character topics for weekly advisory and assembly. School assemblies three times a week begin with wise words from a student or faculty member and end with a senior talk, required of every senior, her long-anticipated and much-feared chance to tell the school family what matters most to her. Lunchtime Learning sessions gather crowds around controversial issues, led by students (a religious diversity panel), teachers ('What is the distance between bystander and perpetrator?' or 'Should we go to war in Iraq?') and community members ('Confessions of a Former Racist'). Parents attend sessions as well.
The caring school community is highly praised by GPS students and families. Every new student has a buddy. Students celebrate a faculty member's five years cancer free; they lavish love on a classmate in St. Jude's Children's Hospital; they cook meals for faculty members in crisis. Seniors serve a homemade breakfast to the cafeteria staff; a club takes over cafeteria dishwashing and bathroom cleaning to give regular employees an afternoon off. A February Winterim session gathers small faculty/student groups to work, serve, learn, and travel. The student-led Forum on Character sponsors 'Real Conversations,' for which 30 to 50 faculty and staff members volunteer to address small groups of students on their own character-defining moments: fleeing from Castro's Cuba as a teenager, living with a chronic disease, serving in the Peace Corps.
From the Code of Ethical Conduct which awaits each middle schooler's signature, to the athletic program, centered on the idea of team, to the eighth grade Changes & Choices classes'character education is a way of life at GPS.
