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The following Character Pledge embodies the moral vision of the Lovett community:
We, who are members of the Lovett community, seek to live lives of good character. We believe that good character grows from daily acts of honesty, respect, responsibility, and compassion. We pledge ourselves to develop these ideals with courage and integrity, striving to do what is right at all times."
Character education coordinators in each school division work with staff, students, and parents to integrate character education into the school curriculum. These coordinators play an active role in teaching, support the school's service learning program, and are a resource for character education materials and programming.
Character education is a community-wide process. The Lovett School actively works in partnership with parents as we raise our children to become young adults of character and honor.
To this end, Lovett occasionally sponsors parent education programs that bring parents together to talk about issues of parenting in today's society. These programs include book discussion groups, such as a yearlong study of Wendy Mogel's The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, and workshops about raising adolescents.
Guest speakers
Through generous support of donors and specific endowment funds, such as the Jack and Anne Glenn Character Education Speakers Fund, Lovett is able to host renowned speakers as resources for our students, faculty, staff, and parents. Character education often occurs through role modeling, and the students' exposure to people who integrate their moral commitments into their work serves to further this end.
Such speakers include Anne Keiser, photographer and author of Sir Edmund Hilary and the People of Mount Everest, who presented the story of a man who not only used courage and perseverance to summit Mount Everest, but also used his fame to help the Sherpa people. Another includes Linda Biehl, philanthropist and mother of Amy Biehl, who was killed during the last years of South Africa's Apartheid regime. Linda has worked with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, headed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in support of the amnesty application of her daughter's killers. She has also done work creating economic growth and educational programs in the impoverished townships in which Amy once lived--demonstrating a story of forgiveness, peace-building, and service that calls all of us to give more to the world. And, tying into Lovett's commitment to environmental stewardship and sustainability, The Glenn Speakers Fund has also brought Ray Anderson, the late founder and chairman of Interface, the world's largest commercial carpet manufacturer. Ray embarked on a mission for Interface to "be the first company that, by its deeds, shows the entire industrial world what sustainability is in all its dimensions and, in doing so, become restorative through the power of influence." Also visiting Lovett thanks to the Glenn Fund was Charles Marsh, an author and University of Virginia religion professor and director of Theological Horizons, as well as Tommy Newberry and Dr. Mark Crawford speaking on parenting and Georgia State football coach Bill Curry.