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 generationon.org.

Anticipatory Set:

Refer to the acrostics from the first lesson of the unit. Ask the students to name words from the acrostics that they admire in a person of courage. Discuss.

• Post the following two quotes about courage for students to respond to in their character education journals. Tell them to reflect in writing on the meaning of one of the quotes.

"Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." –Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear." –Ambrose Redmoon

• As an alternative, they can journal about something they think they will need to have courage to do in the future (a personal matter or an issue that promotes the common good).