Pennsbury Administrators Speak at National Conference

In October, Pennsbury High School assis­tant prin­ci­pals, Patti Steckroat and Cherrissa Gibson, pre­sent­ed at the 25th annu­al National Character.org Conference in Washington, D.C.  The pair led a break­out ses­sion titled, Getting Comfortable with the Uncomfortable: Building Character and Leadership to Promote Positive School Culture.

Ms. Gibson and Ms. Steckroat led a team of teach­ers and stu­dents at Pennsbury High School to earn PHS the recog­ni­tion as a State and National School of Character in 2016 and have con­tin­ued to work to improve the school cul­ture at PHS. At the 2018 National Character.org Conference, they facil­i­tat­ed a break­out ses­sion work­shop that pro­vid­ed par­tic­i­pants with a holis­tic approach to char­ac­ter edu­ca­tion at the high school lev­el by high­light­ing the suc­cess­es of the Pennsbury PEACE Challenge. A focal point of the break­out ses­sion was the PEACE Challenge sem­i­nar which Ms. Gibson and Ms. Steckroat imple­ment­ed at PHS dur­ing the 2017–2018 school year.

The PEACE sem­i­nar is a month­ly prac­tice of hold­ing class dis­cus­sions with all stu­dents focused on the core val­ues of the PEACE Challenge and cur­rent events.  The sem­i­nar is a for­mal dis­cus­sion, based on a text, video, or oth­er pro­vid­ed con­tent, in which the teacher asks open-ended ques­tions and facil­i­tates crit­i­cal think­ing on the part of the stu­dents.  Within the con­text of the dis­cus­sion, stu­dents lis­ten to the view­points and com­ments of oth­ers, think crit­i­cal­ly, and artic­u­late their own thoughts. The goal of the PEACE Challenge sem­i­nar is to teach stu­dents to respect the view­points of oth­ers while devel­op­ing skills to com­mu­ni­cate per­son­al beliefs in a non-confrontational man­ner, there­by build­ing a com­mu­ni­ty of under­stand­ing and sup­port at PHS.