Character Education Radio Interview

The first five minutes of Gary Price's Viewpoints radio show feature MEF Executive Director Glenn Wilke speaking about MEF's nationally recognized approach to Character Education:

Viewpoints is an energetic, entertaining, highly-produced, contemporary radio magazine with two major stories weekly.  Each week, Viewpoints features interviews with guests that have expertise and real-word experience regarding the specific issues. The program is aired on over 500 radio stations throughout the country.

Character Education for Kids

Glenn Wilke's Interview Transcript

Synopsis: Character in a person is something we admire, and something we all would like to think that our kids grow up to achieve. But how do you teach them character? What are some of the virtues that go hand-in-hand with character and how can we instill them in our kids? We talk to two people who work with character education efforts to find out how two very different organizations are teaching kids teamwork, responsibility, fairness, friendship and other character traits in some very trying environments.

Gary Price: There’s a lot of talk about kids and education these days: Are we providing enough funding for schools in all neighborhoods? Is “teaching to the test” robbing kids of a well-rounded education? These are important issues, but there’s one that we seem to be spending little – if any – time on at all: Character education. It’s what underlies every student’s success but it often gets lost in the political and economic arguments of the day. This week, we talk to two people who have seen up close how instilling virtues such as hard work, trust, perseverance, friendship, respect and teamwork can change students’ lives for the better no matter what their situation. Glenn Wilke is the Executive Director of the Midtown Educational Foundation in Chicago, an organization that has helped low-income students in the area since 1965. Wilke says the program – Midtown for boys and Metro for girls — starts in fourth grade, and continues on in various forms up to high school graduation. In addition to one-on-one tutoring, sports, internships, classes to help with math, science, English and other subjects, students are also schooled in those attributes that build character…

Glenn Wilke: First of all our staffs at both of our centers are handpicked. They’re outstanding young men and women of virtue and character themselves, so they emulate and really show each of the young men and women what we’re talking about by their lives. And they get it. And then how do we teach it? We have actual classes where we go through various virtues, whether it be hard work or industriousness, or integrity, key virtue honesty, what is friendship, responsibility to live up to your commitments. So we take them through these virtues and then throughout the program, throughout the classes and the counseling, the sports these virtues are constantly brought up: How does this apply to what we’re doing at this moment?

Price: Wilke says that parents are a big part of their child’s education, so they have classes for them as well…

Wilke: In terms of the parents, they learn the same virtues in many cases because we have parenting nights during the school year and during the summer they come. And at one point one of the high school girls came down to where the parents were having their parenting session and the mother said, “Well, what did you learn tonight, dear?” She said, “Oh, whatever.” Because that’s what they say, “Oh, whatever.” She (mother) said, “I thought you learned about the virtue of responsibility, and I thought responsibility meant this, this and this.” Her (daughter) eyes lit up and she said, “Oh, you’re learning what we’re learning. So you really want us to do these things.” And she said, “Exactly.” So we try and reinforce it. We have the classes that give the basic idea, and then throughout the program we try and show it in everything we do.

Price: Teaching kids that industriousness or friendship are important, but it isn’t the whole story. Wilke says that their mentors and tutors try to show students how these virtues play out in their everyday lives…

Wilke: It might be something about friendship. You don’t look at that as a particular virtue but it really is. And we would talk about what a true friend is, how you know if someone really is your friend. Is it someone who’s going to be loyal to you? Who’s going to be with you in times of need? Is it someone who really cares about you just for who you are, not for what you can do for them? It’s an overarching virtue that we teach in both the centers. So then they begin to think, well is this in the route in their school, in their neighborhood or whatever? Is this the right person? There’s a lot of gangs in Chicago, a lot of murders on the West Side and the South Side as the whole country knows about, and they need to know that. How do I find out who’s the person who cares for me for who I am and not for what I can do for them. What I do with the fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders who would go through a virtue, maybe it would be orderliness. So I would sit with my young fourth-grader and I’d say, “Okay. Do you have an assignment notebook? Do you have a place to study at home that has a lamp and a good place of quietness where you don’t have the radio on? Do you know what the most important subject is to study first?” So we get really practical in how we bring these things across.

Price: Wilke says that there are many success stories from the program. One young man even went on to become a social media pioneer…

Wilke: Randy Duvall is the name the name of a young man who went through our programs and he came to the programs for many years. He went to Stanford, of all places. After Stanford he started working for a company that was a new company at the time called Facebook, and he was one of the top first 100 employees who worked at Facebook. He worked for a number of years there with Mark Zuckerberg and now he’s back in Chicago giving back. He’s getting a degree in teaching and he’s teaching this semester, the second semester of the school year and he’s getting his degree to be a teacher. So he’s a success.

Price: Sometimes the students who attend the Midtown and Metro programs need a little extra push to succeed once they leave to go to college. Wilke says that one young Latina alumna stumbled a bit at first…

Wilke: She went to a good high school, and then she got in to a college, Loyola here in Chicago, and during the first semester she didn’t do too well. She was living there, one of our donors gave her a scholarship to live at Loyola, and she didn’t do very well at all. I saw her after that and I said, “How are you doing? You know, are you okay?” She looked at me and smiled and said, “I’m just fine. I will do well. Next semester I will pass everything. I know what I’ve learned here at Metro and I will do just fine.” And she did. She passed everything. That’s that character aspect, she said, “I’m going to have that grit, that tenacity. I’m going to work it, I’m going to focus more.” And she’s well on her way to a college degree.