Laurie Namey and Patricia "Brigid" Carmichael have about 40 years experience in education between them.
Their experience in education has taught them that there is a lot more to educating a child than academics.
For starters, children need character education, Namey said.
"Character education is a necessity in our ever-changing, diverse community," said Namey, who is in her first year as assistant principal at Edgewood Middle School. "Schools need to make character education important."
Namey and Carmichael recently got their chance to help other schools and organizations start character-education programs.
In a program that started in the summer of 2007, the two women met with a team of 13 other educators at the state's Department of Education to compile a book to teach school districts how to implement a character-education program. The fruit of their labor is a 122-page book called Character Education by Design, A Blueprint for Successful District and School Initiatives.
The book is divided into three main parts - building a districtwide character-education initiative, starting and sustaining character-education initiatives, and involving parents in character education. Each of the three sections includes principles that are designed to make the process of building a character program simple.
In the first section, school districts are encouraged to create a school plan, appoint a committee to oversee the plan, get parents involved and compile a list of comprehensive character traits and virtues. The second section deals with establishing and implementing the program. The third section covers parent involvement.
Each of the two Harford educators brought specific backgrounds and knowledge to the project.
Namey earned a bachelor of science degree in communications, and a bachelor of arts in secondary education English from Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, Pa. She earned a master's in urban education from Goucher College.
With more than a decade of experience in education, Namey has worked as a behavior-intervention specialist, an English teacher and now an assistant principal at Edgewood Middle.
In 2003, she helped create a curriculum called Social Connections, a language arts-based character and multi-cultural program that deals with such things as respect, responsibility, bullying, violence prevention and conflict resolution, which was used at Edgewood Middle from 2003 to 2007.
