By Amy Looper, MindOH! Co-founder

As friends and supporters of MindOH!, I thought you might like to read this brief update on how successful the recent '04-'05 school year has been for our MindOH! client schools. The following is an excerpt from a report from our OH! News for Client Schools newsletter by Kris Hines, MindOH! Customer Support:

Wow! Another successful school year is over, and MindOH! would like to thank all of our clients for making it such a successful year. With over 10,500 module completions for the '04-'05 school year, this is what your students are saying about what MindOH! has taught them:

• 83% of students are willing to take more responsibility for the choices that got them into the discipline process
• 88% of students have a better understanding of why being responsible will get them better results
• 89% of students are willing to work on getting a positive result from this situation
• 87% of students agreed their attitude affects whether or not they reach their goals
• 96% of students indicated that this program was easy to understand
• 93% of students learned something about how to change a disagreement to an understanding

By Marvin Berkowitz, Sanford N. McDonnell Professor of Character Education, University of Missouri-St. Louis

Shakespeare wrote that "all the world's a stage."

Works for me. I love an audience. Perhaps you do, too. Many of my friends are performers of one sort or another: comedians, actors, singers, musicians, dancers and writers. They also seem to love an audience.

Here's the problem: I love to brag and show off, but I was raised so that I feel uncomfortable doing it. It is vain.

So I try to stifle my need for an audience when it comes to talking about myself or my periodic accomplishments. Recently, a book of my columns came out (notice that I didn't even say, "I wrote a book," or "I put out a book."). But I have great difficulty telling people about it. This is not a desirable attribute when it comes to marketing.

By MindOH! Guest Author Seth Schapiro, Creator and Developer of the WiseSkills character-building program

As problems on campuses have increased, more and more educators are developing strategies to prevent violence at school. "Bullying prevention" has become a popular phrase to indicate programs and strategies to reduce aggressive behaviors at school.

However, this term focuses on the negative behavior we hope to prevent rather than on the positive character qualities we want to cultivate in young people. Helping young people develop into people of character involves far more than just having them not do certain behaviors, but actually making positive, healthy, and ethical decisions throughout all that they do.