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 The League.

Anticipatory Set:

Write a list of varied and famous American historical figures/philanthropists on the board and ask learners, “What do these people have in common?” Examples may include local philanthropists as well as some of the following: Jane McCallum, Caesar Chavez, Andrew Carnegie, Eleanor Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, Jane Addams, Squanto, Clara Barton, W. E. B. Dubois, Susan B. Anthony,  Dorothea Dix, W.K.Kellogg, Eli Lilly, John Mott, Harriet Tubman, Madam C.J. Walker, Booker T. Washington, Rachel Carson, and George Washington Carver. Discuss the traits that all of the peoples' names written on the board share (all were/are philanthropists and community-minded, caring individuals) and why we remember them for their positive contributions to the common good.

• Define philanthropy as "giving time, talent, or treasure for the common good." Discuss and identify some of the "time, talent, and treasure" the listed individuals shared that benefited others. Tell the students that each of the individuals on the list on the board performed small acts of kindness that built their character. They didn't start by doing the great things for which we remember them.
• Ask the learners to choose people on the list who seemed like caring individuals and explain why they chose them. Discuss what caring [feeling concern, showing interest] means.  
• Do a quick acrostic as a class to get the students thinking about the meaning of caring. Write the word CARING vertically on the board. Tell the students to use the letters in the word caring to start each line and write synonyms, adjectives, and examples of the word caring.

Example:

C-concern for others

A-always showing kindness

R-reaching out to others

I-initiating friendships

N-noticing needs of others

G-giving and sharing

• Say, "Caring involves showing concern for the feelings and needs of others and doing what we can to make others feel better. One of the ways we show caring is by performing acts of kindness." Discuss how one person doing small acts of kindness repeatedly or a group of people doing small acts of kindness can have an impact on a community. Ask, "What effect can our acts of caring have on our community?"
• Give each learner a piece of paper cut in the size and shape of a bookmark. Tell them to write the phrase "Perform Random Acts of Kindness" attractively on their bookmark. They can decorate the bookmarks at home using markers or collage materials. Have them ask their families for ideas of simple acts of kindness they can perform. They write a list of ideas on the back of the bookmark and bring the bookmark to the next class period.

Excerpts taken from Learning to Give lesson, "What Is a Philanthropist and Why Do We Care?" http://www.learningtogive.org/lessons/unit186/lesson1.html

Lead the students to recognize that kind acts may spark others to perform kind acts. This is known as serial reciprocity. Define serial reciprocity as "the process occurring when one person gives to another, by means of time, talent or treasure, and thus causes a continual chain of giving to occur in a linear rather than circular pattern."