This character education mini-lesson is not intended to be a service learning lesson or to meet the K-12 Service-Learning Standards for Quality Practice. The character education units will be most effective when taught in conjunction with a student-designed service project that provides a real world setting in which students can develop and practice good character and leadership skills.  For ideas and suggestions for organizing service events go to www.generationon.org.

Anticipatory Set: 

Ask the students, "What does being true to yourself require you to know about yourself?" Discuss.

Teacher: Today, you'll have the opportuntiy to extend or flesh out your thinking by writing in response to a quote. As you consider which quote to choose, think about which one reminds you of your own integrity and, perhaps, share an experience from your own life that connects with the quote.

• Ask for five student volunteers to each read aloud one of the quotes.

  Quotes:

  "Have the courage to say no.  Have the courage to face the truth.  Do the right thing because it is right.  These are the magic keys to living your life with integrity."  --W. Clement Stone

"Integrity is not a conditional word.  It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather.  It is your inner image of yourself, and, if you look in there and see a "person" who won't cheat, then you know you never will."   --John D. MacDonald

"No one will question your integrity, if your integrity is not questionable."  --Nathaniel Bronner, Jr.

"A man has to live with himself and he should see to it that he always has good company."  --Charles Evans Hughes

"One of the truest tests of integrity is the blunt refusal to be compromised."    --Chinua Achebe (Nigerian writer)

• Ask the students to "think, pair and share" about which quote they most identify with and why. Then ask the learners to copy their selected quote in their journals and write a rationale for why they identify themselves and integrity with the quote.