Good Work for Brazilian Educators Featured on CNN

Professors Valéria Arantes and Ulisses Araújo of the University of São Paulo have for the past several years been working on an investigation of “good work” with Brazilian educators, part of The Good Project Brasil (link) initiative. Our team has been excited to observe how ideas from The Good Project have been applied in the Brazilian context.

Recently, this work appeared on CNN Brasil in two video features that highlighted ongoing research and implications for teachers, which we share below for our readers. (Note that the videos are in the original Portuguese.)

The first video spotlight described the investigation that Arantes and Araújo have done of “good teaching,” including the 3 Es of good work (excellence, ethics, and engagement). In interviews with 2,000 Brazilian public school teachers, participants were asked about their values and sense of purpose within education. Questions included:

1. What are your goals and plans for the coming years and a brighter future?

2. Tell us about your life purpose, describing in detail your thoughts, feelings, and actions about them.

83% of teachers in the sample described education as central to their vision of life. 88% commented on excellence, while 56% described a commitment to ethics and responsibility. Arantes, Araújo, and their colleagues conclude that teacher trainings should support educators to develop purpose and foster socioemotional skills.

The second feature includes teachers’ responses to a question regarding their “dream school,” with 97% of respondents desiring change from current educational models. Themes discussed by teachers included more democratic and inclusive institutions; active learning pedagogies; and a focus on citizenship.

We congratulate Valéria, Ulisses, and their team for this recognition of their work and look forward to continuing to follow their progress! 

Announcement: The Good Project Receives Grant From The John Templeton Foundation

The Good Project is pleased to announce that we have received over $1 million in funding from The John Templeton Foundation to study the impact of the recently developed Good Project Lesson Plans.

In the three year, mixed-methods study, we will investigate the effects of these lesson plans across a variety of educational settings and probe how engagement with the curriculum might result in student character change. In addition, participating teachers will partake in a community of practice in which they will be able to learn from one another's successes and challenges with the curriculum.

As described to the Templeton Foundation:

"The world of work is rapidly changing. Although adolescence is a period of identity development, few students are taught to think about how to behave ethically at the workplace. The Good Project, originally the Good Work Project (Gardner, Csikszentmihalyi, & Damon, 2001), has developed lesson plans focused on personal reflection related to workplace and school-based dilemmas. The curriculum aims to help adolescents develop and internalize moral (i.e., a good neighbor), civic (i.e., a good citizen), performance (i.e., a good student/worker), and intellectual (i.e., a good thinker) virtues. These virtues embody The Good Project’s 3 Es of good work: Ethical (for the greater good); Excellent (high quality); and Engaging (meaningful).

This mixed-methods national study will build upon current work with a diverse group of teachers who are committed to exploring deep questions about the nature of work, its connection to one’s values and identity, and its relationship to social good. In Year 1, we will use surveys, focus groups, and student portfolios to assess teacher fidelity to the curriculum and students’ potential growth in character virtues and ability to navigate complex dilemmas. In Year 2, we will adapt curricular content for teacher use and gain feedback through focus groups. In Year 3, we will focus on scalability and sustainability of the curriculum. Educators at participating schools will be led through three phases to build an online community of practice where they can exchange ideas, strategies, and materials as they implement the lesson plans. Overall, the project aims to create a community of practitioners who will help build a strong, scalable character program."

The Good Project thanks The John Templeton Foundation for the generous funding of this project. We are eager to begin and look forward to releasing announcements, lessons learned, and materials developed in the course of our research.

If you have questions regarding the study, please contact Shelby Clark, Senior Research Manager, at shelby_clark@gse.harvard.edu.

Announcement: Spanish and Chinese Translations

The Good Project is pleased to present Spanish and Chinese translations of our Lesson Plans. These have been designed to foster the ideas and practices of Good Work, based on many years of research, teaching, and informal experimentation. Please find the translations on our website here. 

The curriculum consists of 16 45-minute lessons, organized into 4 separate units. Each lesson is organized through timed activities and includes a specific lesson goal along with assessment recommendations. All necessary readings and worksheets are also included. Students will collect the work they generate in a portfolio; that collection can then be evaluated with respect to the central ideas and skills foregrounded in the curriculum.

Also included in the packet are introductory materials to familiarize teachers with The Good Project’s approach and theory of change. Additionally, there are two appendices–a guideline for a whole school initiative, as well as a long-term project that can be used as a capstone.  

The sequence of lessons in the full curriculum guide students in four ways: to think deeply about The Good Project’s framework of “good work;” to develop reflective habits that will allow them to navigate complexity, to understand and articulate their own beliefs and values; and to make well-informed decisions in the future.

Our hope is that the translated lesson plans will make our work accessible to the large number of educators who speak or work primarily with students in Spanish or Chinese, within the United States and across the world. 

We would like to thank The Argosy Foundation for providing the generous funding that made this work possible. The Good Project has also received significant support from The Saul Zaentz Charitable Foundation, The Endeavor Foundation, and additional anonymous funders. 

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or want to connect as you implement these lessons with your students. We are available via our “contact us” page, which can be found here.

Commencement Wrap Up 2022

by Lynn Barendsen

For the first time in a couple of years, it appears that a majority of Commencement celebrations have taken place in person. College seniors—who have certainly seen their share of disruption over the past two years—gathered together with family, friends and mentors to celebrate their accomplishments and mark the transition into their next stage of life.

And, in another return to relative “normalcy,” dignitaries from multiple worlds stood behind podiums to offer wisdom to the class of 2022, many of whom are poised to enter the working world. Perhaps not surprisingly, we see a number of good-work related themes in their words.

Vice President Kamala Harris, addressing the graduating class at Tennessee State University, emphasized the unique promise of this class. Here at The Good Project, we might understand her advice as turning “obstacles into opportunity” as she points to their particular vantage point and the possibilities they might see from their perspective:

“As the class of 2022, you bring possibility to the table.  You are a generation that grew up online and survived a pandemic.  You are familiar with a world that, for many of us, feels a bit strange and new.  You have been engaged with this world since you were little… Most importantly, you have the ability to see what can be, unburdened by what has been.  To look at the challenges facing us and find solutions that generations before could have never imagined.”

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, addressing the graduating class at the University of Pennsylvania, used the moment to talk about responsibility, and to place the responsibility for change squarely on the shoulders of the graduates:

"We've nearly broken this Republic of ours, but somehow you've got to fix it. You're going to have to initiate a new movement, a new Union Army, that must be dedicated above all else—including your career and personal advancement—to the preservation of this country's civic ideals. You'll have to learn, and then re-teach the rest of us that equality—real equality is the hallmark and birthright of all Americans."

Grammy award winning musician Taylor Swift, addressing the graduating class at NYU, emphasized the importance of learning and resilience (or, in good work terms, pausing to find time to reflect before moving forward):

“There will be times in life when you need to stand up for yourself. Times when the right thing is to back down and apologize. Times when the right thing is to fight, times when the right thing is to turn and run. Times to hold on with all you have and times to let go with grace. Sometimes the right thing to do is to throw out the old schools of thought in the name of progress and reform. Sometimes the right thing to do is to listen to the wisdom of those who have come before us. How will you know what the right choice is in these crucial moments? You won’t… hard things will happen to us. We will recover. We will learn from it. We will grow more resilient because of it.”

Hamdi Ulukaya, founder and chief executive of Chobani, spoke to the graduating class at Northeastern University. He told a classic “good work” story, one in which he was torn between responsibilities as he tried to build a business that was at once, good to his employees and good for business. Ulakaya explained that as Chobani started to grow, he realized that there was a community of refugees close by who were eager for employment. He was advised not to hire them, that his company would be boycotted, and that IF he decided to hire them, he should certainly keep this fact quiet. His response—and his encouragement to new graduates—was to find and speak their own truth:

“I said, ‘If I’m going to lose everything, I’m going to speak the truth!’ That’s what we did. We hired a few refugees, and then we hired more, and we hired more. Today, we are the leading brand of Greek yogurt in America—and we have hundreds and hundreds of immigrants and refugees working for us in Idaho and upstate New York.”

Finally, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Adern, speaking at Harvard’s Commencement, spoke to the importance of embracing diverse opinions, productive disagreement and trust: 

“The issues we navigate as a society will only intensify. The disinformation will only increase. The pull into the comfort of our tribes will be magnified. But we have it within us to ensure that this doesn’t mean we fracture. We are the richer for our difference, and poorer for our division. Through genuine debate and dialogue, through rebuilding trust in information and one another, through empathy – let us reclaim the space in between. After all, there are some things in life that make the world feel small and connected, let kindness be one of them.”

These commencement speakers relayed messages of hope and overcoming obstacles with tenacity at a time when the challenges we face feel unprecedented. Originally intended for the graduates, their words offer a source of much-needed inspiration for all of us.