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"Just make up your mind at the very outset that your work is going to stand for quality . . . that you are going to stamp a superior quality upon everything that goes out of your hands. that whatever you do shall bear the hall-mark of excellence."

My 9th grade English teacher, Miss Robbie, embodied these words written by Orison Marden. Her commitment to teaching high school students how to write was premised on her understanding that sentence structure and grammar required vigilant daily attention.

With this commitment to excellence, students in Miss Robbie's class were daily confronted with a sentence written on the chalkboard which had to diagrammed and punctuated correctly.

In the character education world the pursuit of excellence in one's work is described by Dr. Thomas Lickona, Director of the Center for the 4th and 5th R's, by his words, conscience of craft. Dr. Lickona identifies that educators for character need to encourage kids to make the daily commitment to explore best effort.

Conscience of craft assumes that every individual can develop their own standard for excellence. More than simply doing the work, conscience of craft directs a young person to appreciate, through their actions, their internal, personal standard of excellence.

Conscience of craft is not about competition with another; nor does it presume that the commitment to excellence is about being the best at everything. Rather, conscience of craft underscores the willingness to pursue quality of effort in the tasks we accomplish.

Miss Robbie was an outstanding English teacher. What I didn't realize or understand was she used her classroom to be a character educator.

In the early 1960s she exhibited in her classroom what educators for character are doing in classrooms throughout America today. Daily, she practiced her understanding of the pursuit of excellence as she vaccinated her 9th graders with the character theme of conscience of craft through her relentless commitment to teaching sentence and grammar structure.

Today's classroom character educators are advocates of teaching kids of character to do their best in the classroom and build the character muscle of pursuing excellence.