Making Schools and Families Successful

Making Schools and Families Successful introduces to schools a process that reaches the deeper motivation of students that unifies students and teachers. This process is centered on unique potential and character. Since in character development parents are the primary teachers and the home the primary classroom, the school eventually seeks its natural bond with the family. This School-Family partnership establishes the natural foundation for scholarship.

For more than five decades Joe Gauld has successfully challenged our cultures widely held - but flawed - beliefs about education. He founded the Hyde School where he translated ideas into practice, refined the methodology and proved that the unifying bond of Student/Family/Teachers was the greatest unrecognized power for good in education. Tapping into this power produces transformational results in the lives of students and their families, while also empowering schools to flourish. This book contains the Holy Grail of education. , The work Joseph Gauld has done through his stewardship of The Hyde School should serve as a model for every school in the nation on how to prepare students to succeed in today’s challenging and changing world. Laying out these best practices, his book is must-reading for anyone who cares about the future of American education., Our family’s Hyde School experience was based upon Joe Gauld’s belief that each of us has a unique potential and that an education based on character development is the means by which our children can realize that potential. As parents who participated in the Hyde program we were immersed in the character development process, and for us the experience was life changing, just as it was for our son. In my view, there is nothing that could benefit America’s educational system more than adopting and putting to work the principles set forth in this book., Joe Gauld inspired me to understand that schools can be reimagined to reach students at a deeper level. By following Joe’s unifying precepts that he developed at the Hyde School, we in the Halifax Schools were able to purposefully create a school community in which students understand that they are each worthy individuals who are gifted with their own unique talents and abilities (no matter their family or home circumstances). By following Joe’s Hyde model, we were able to create a school culture in which students are expected to give their best academically as well as in their interactions with others. Students know that they will be supported by the school community (the adults in the school as well as other students) when they have the courage to act with character, to take responsibly, to honor the truth, and to treat others with kindness and empathy. Through the implementation of Joe’s unifying precepts, we have the tools to transform our schools into places that truly honor the growth of the whole student.

Joseph “Joey” Gauld is the founder of the first U.S. school to base its program on character education, Hyde School. He received the prestigious Sanford N. McDonnell Award for Lifetime Achievement in Character Education from Character.org in 2016, fifty years after the first school opened its doors in 1966.