1. Think of those people whom you have considered to be your strongest coworkers. What traits and characteristics contribute to their success? How does this overlap with domains of emotional intelligence?
2. Think of the traits and characteristics of those students whom you recall most fondly. How do they overlap with the ones for coworkers mentioned in the previous question? What does that tell you about the importance of emotional intelligence in your school?
3. In your experience in education-related coursework and professional development conferences and workshops, to what initiatives does emotional intelligence bear most similarity? What are the points of similarity and difference? How can you use this information to help you plan for success now and in the future?
4. Many programs use problem-solving steps, and so do many individuals. Can you identify a problem-solving procedure that you use regularly? How is it similar or different from Figure 1.1, and how do you see the differences playing out as you contemplate using the book's approach or some variant?

Chapter 2: Readiness: Assessing Your School's Potential for Change

1. Engage in a research project in contemporary history:
   1. Make a list of all the various innovations in character education, curriculum and instruction, etc. that were introduced to members of your staff over the past 5 years.
   2. Circle those that are still in active, consistent use. Put a line through those that are not implemented regularly.
   3. What factors may differentiate the "resilient" initiative from those that have fallen by the wayside? What implications does this have for your social-emotional learning and character education implementation process?
2. What obstacles do you find keep your school and staff from finding and maintaining focus? What leads task groups to get derailed, and how might you prevent it?

Chapter 3: Recognize Feelings: Know When to Start Problem Solving

1. What is to be gained by including feelings in the planning process? What might occur if they are omitted?
2. What are your own feelings about including feelings? What might this tell you about your own experiences with emotional intelligence?
3. Can you identify other administrators whom you feel do a good job of including emotional factors in their deliberations? How do they do this? What might you learn from them? Do the same for staff members, especially those who have formal or informal positions of leadership.

Chapter 4: Identify Problems: Look at the Current Situation

1. Think about a typical work week. Which of your job responsibilities did you find most gratifying and enjoyable? Which least so? How does this match with what you know about your own pattern of multiple intelligence strengths?
2. In this chapter, you are asked to think of a school like a corporation. However, corporations have come under great scrutiny lately because of the unethical and greedy behavior of its leaders and the failure of those responsible for exercising oversight to do their jobs diligently, carefully, and courageously. How can you identify potential problems early, before they grow or are brought to your attention by others in a serious state?

Chapter 5: Set Goals: Focus the Change Efforts

1. Think about people who have served in a mentoring role for you in the past. What was needed to make these relationships strong? When these relationships did not work well, what accounted for this?
2. Of the five entry points to social-emotional learning and character education, which are listed on page 41, which ones could be considered strengths of your organization? Which ones seem to be particularly in need to strengthening? What organizational factors in your school might account for the strength and weaknesses?
3. Consider the relationship between your own personal goals and your professional goals. How can you bring them into greater synergy?

Chapter 6: Generate Options: Think of Many Things To Do

1. Think about the group of people involved in brainstorming options. What interpersonal dynamics—issues of power/position discrepancies—might inhibit some members from feeling fully comfortable, and therefore completely participating in brainstorming? How might you address such dynamics?
2. What is your plan for introducing to yourself and your brainstorming group the varieties of social-emotional activities that are available and can be considered as options?
3. When do you do your best brainstorming? Think about the most creative work groups that you have been a part of. How can you create conditions at school meetings for staff to brainstorm effectively and respectfully?

Chapter 7: Envision Outcomes: Consider All the Consequences

1. Looking at the list of "microsystems" on pages 53 and 54, which of these contexts are particularly salient in your setting? What additional microsystems might your setting have that are not on the list?
2. Of the outcomes envisioned by other members of your brainstorming team, which were a surprise, or unanticipated, by you? What might this teach you about the different priorities of groups within your setting?
3. Envision those students in your setting who have the fewest social-emotional learning skills. Envision those who lack strength of character. How can you ensure that what you are considering will have a powerful and lasting impact on them? How might this affect what you are considering thus far?

Chapter 8: Choose Carefully: Select a Goal-Oriented or Goal-Driven Solution

1. To help you make sure that as many constituents as possible are involved in the decision making, try the following exercise: Make a list of as many constituent groups from within your school as you can. Perhaps ask a colleague to do the same. Then, make a list of the people who were involved in the decision-making process. Compare these lists. Are there groups that appear on the list of constituents that are absent from the lists of participants?
2. Are there any solutions to which you have become particularly attached? How will you ensure that this will not affect your ability to accept other outcomes, should they emerge?
3. Sometimes it is difficult to discipline yourself to use a systematic decision-making framework. What were your reactions as you read about using this kind of structure? Have you used a similar, structured process in the past? What were the advantages? What were the pitfalls? How might you motivate yourself to make it more likely to use the Decision Matrix or its equivalent?

Chapter 9: Plan Prescriptively: Anticipate All Details and Roadblocks

1. How can you encourage your team and yourself to become more reflective about the process of social-emotional learning and character education implementation? Could structures such as regular team meetings or a shared online team journal help in this effort?
2. Think about a place where you have worked where you felt respected, needed, and cared for. What heroes and heroines, stories, meetings, ceremonies, rituals, assemblies, and group work opportunities contributed to the positive nature of this environment?
3. Based on the discussion of running meetings in a social-emotional learning friendly way on page 77, what is one thing that you plan to do differently in meetings that you run?
4. Think about a group (committee, task force) that you have been involved with in the past, and that you believe worked productively and efficiently. What factors do you think contributed to the success of this group? Now, think about less productive and efficient groups in which you were a participant. What factors might account for the shortcomings of these groups?

Chapter 10: Learn Constantly: Obtain Feedback and Modify Accordingly

1. Reflect on feedback you have received from supervisors in the past. What has gone best and worst? How might this inform the processes you will set up?
2. How will you frame the monitoring and feedback process so that your colleagues will know that this is being done in the spirit of growth and improvement, rather than criticism from "Big Brother"?
3. How might the work on "envisioning outcomes", which you did in Chapter 7, help inform the monitoring process?
4. It can be difficult, if not impossible, to set up monitoring and feedback systems in all areas that need them. What areas are most important to bring into a "spirit of continuous improvement" first? How can you focus on those areas?
5. How can you ensure that your Social-Emotional Development Committee or Leadership Team takes its work seriously, feels appreciated, and operates with a sense of foresight and challenge?

Chapter 11: Look to the Future: Cultivate Participation and Leadership to Build and Sustain a Caring Community of Learners

1. What parallels exist between what you want the teachers to be doing with their students in terms of social-emotional learning and character education, and what you want to be doing with your staff?
2. What personal learning goals might you have that are linked to your setting's growth in social-emotional learning and character education? How might you address these during the process of implementation?
3. How do you see the interface of social-emotional learning and character education and pressures for standardized test score performance playing out in your school? District? State? How can you articulate to your staff, school board, parents, and community the importance of social-emotional programs to your academic curriculum?
4. Where do you see future leadership emerging in your setting? How can you actively cultivate it and put it to work?

Building Learning Communities with Character: How to Integrate Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning was written by Bernard Novick, Jeffrey S. Kress, and Maurice J. Elias. This 138-page, 6" x 9" book (Stock #101240; ISBN 0-87120-665-X) is available from ASCD for $18.95 (ASCD member) and $22.95 (nonmember). Copyright 2002 by ASCD. To order a copy, call ASCD at 1-800-933-2723 (in Virginia 1-703-578-9600) and press 2 for the Service Center. Or buy the book from ASCD's Online Store.