From the earliest days of our nation’s history, character building has been the cornerstone of our educational process. Not just reading, writing & ‘rithmetic—but respect, responsibility, kindness, optimism, work ethic, and getting along. We seemed to have misplaced those building blocks and we are committed to nurturing those characteristics back into the fabric of our society.

Smart Character Choices began in the fall of 2002 when Charyl Stockwell Academy was awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Safe and Drug Free Schools office to develop, research, and refine an effective character education program. They recognized a need for schools to play a vital role in deliberately and consistently teaching students positive character traits and in aligning the efforts of parents/family members collectively in that endeavor. The goal of that project was to develop, test, and refine an effective, scientificallybased character education program that embeds character education into the fabric of schools. The research, conducted by the University of Minnesota, has shown a significant student effect in improved behavior and actualization of the character traits in their daily lives.

To date sixteen schools across the state of Michigan have been involved in the development and implementation of Smart Character Choices. Visit the website for more information.