tegrity
THE HONEST Y OF INTEGRIT Y
What adult behaviors best foster honesty?
• Get students to perceive you as supportive of their autonomy
How: lots of choice, listen to voice, empower kids to take control of all that’s
appropriate at their age level.
• Build relationships of warmth and trust
Work to be perceived as an adult whose students say “even if I screw up, my
teacher still likes me.” It’s called unconditional positive regard.
• Have consequences for dishonesty be fair, short-lived, and
have long-lingering repercussions
if indeed consequences are needed, the “cost-benefit equation” is critical.
• Work toward a “mastery-oriented” classroom, rather than a
“performance-oriented” room
If you must give tests, if you must give grades, realize that the more these are
used as carrots or sticks—the more talk there is about them—the more pressure there is to perform. Students perceive carrots and sticks as the tools of a
“controlling” teacher. In “mastery-oriented” classrooms, the pressure is to learn,
rather than to amass points.
• Follow all the recommendations for internalizing motivation
(See Streight, 2014, chapter 7). These practices are the practices that help the
honesty value stick!
David Streight is the Executive Director of the Center for Spiritual and Ethical Education. He is
the author of CSEE’s most recent publication, Breaking Into the Heart of Character (2014) and
can be reached at [email protected].
CSEE Connections
Winter 2014
Page 11