1. raising the bar and closing the gap of student learning
2. treating people with supportive, responsive, and demanding respect and
3. altering the social environment (e.g., other schools and districts and the community) for the better.

He believes that by pursuing his other seven elements of sustainability, it will compel all levels of the system to take moral purpose seriously.

One concrete strategy that leadership teams can use in their school system to advance public service with a moral purpose is service learning. The Alliance for Service-Learning in Education defines service-learning as "a method by which young people learn and develop through active participation in thoughtfully organized service experiences." The Search Institute believes that "the basic components of service-learning transcend settings and sectors. Service - Young people engage in activities that meet the needs of others and the community. Learning - The experiences of serving others are used as an opportunity for self-reflection and learning" (Asset Builders Guide to Service Learning, p. 6).

When schools make service learning a fundamental part of their K-12 system, they incorporate character traits and asset building into the daily life of the school through curriculum that is designed to be both "rigorous and relevant." They alter the social environment by going outside the school walls to serve needs of the larger community system, requiring students and staff to demonstrate "supportive, responsive, and demanding respect." They also raise the bar by requiring students to apply what they've learned to unpredictable, real-world tasks.

Service learning is also a great way to measure the essential learnings of your school; for example, most districts have the rhetoric that students and staff in their system will be lifelong learners, effective communicators, responsible citizens, critical/creative thinkers, and healthy contributors, or similar jargonistic terms with the same general meaning. Well-designed service learning tasks can authentically assess those competencies with the help of the larger community. To the left are examples of a service contract (Template: Service Project Contract) and the follow-up service verification form (Template: Verification of Service Project) that could be modified for use in your own system.

School systems may want to expand "Public service with a moral purpose" into a senior exposition at which graduates of the system demonstrate their competencies in identified essential learnings for the community at large. For example, to the left is a letter to senior students and parents that you may find useful as your leadership team brainstorms ways to measure the essential learnings of your K-12 system (Template: Letter to Senior Students and Parents).

"Public service with a moral purpose" may be further taken from research into practice by having students understand their roles as both an individual and a group member of society. As your district uses systems thinking to build and sustain school improvement, students will see how their school is a microcosm of the local community and even for society at large. The Senior Expo Presentation template (located to the left) is an artifact you may want to consider and modify for your own purposes.

Your leadership team may use both service learning and a culminating exit task to build capacity for systems thinking within the staff and student body as a whole. If you have not already identified indicators of success for your district's essential learnings, you may find the Essential Learnings template to the left useful. (NOTE: It is important to develop your own essential learnings and indicators as the process requires the systems-thinking that you are trying to build. If you use these as examples for discussion, make sure that your entire system understands that it is everyone's "collective efforts" that are most important.)

Another good way to insure that your school system is incorporating high moral purpose into your work is to include students, parents and community members as major stakeholders. If you have not yet developed essential learnings, contact your local area education agency for help in using a quality circle process to involve all stakeholders in the development of the traits you want students to demonstrate as a result of your K-12 system work.

If you have already developed your school system's essential learnings, you may be ready to expand assessment of those learnings to include not only teachers and the individual student but peers, parents, and community members as well. The Senior Expo Presentation Rubric template (located to the left) is an artifact that was developed by one school system's stakeholders to be used to measure a senior exit presentation.

Over time as systems-thinking capacity develops within your district, you may be ready to involve K-12 teachers and support staff into the exit presentation that measures the essential learnings of your system. A wonderful way to demonstrate "public service with a moral purpose" is to have each senior matched with a K-12 "faculty friend." The role of this adult is to provide one-on-one support through coaching at a dress rehearsal prior to the actual graded senior exhibition. The Senior Expo Dress Rehearsal Responsibilities template (located to the left) is an artifact that your K-12 leadership team may find useful. (NOTE: If your school system is too large to involve all K-12 faculty and support staff as "faculty friends," then rethink this idea to identify 9-12 "faculty friends," or another grouping that makes sense for your system.) The goal is to get your school to recognize the power of systems thinking and to take responsibility for working as a system in the development of each learner's abilities over time.

Once your leadership team has developed a K-12 process for measuring and demonstrating essential learnings, you will want to demonstrate "supportive, responsive, and demanding respect" for students by asking them for their feedback on the systems-thinking process used. View the Senior Expo Reflection Survey template to left to see one way your district can collect data around essential learnings. (NOTE: Contact your area education agency for a tech tool to put your survey online for easier data collection and interpretation.) Once the student's data is collected, use it at a K-12 planning meeting to improve the process for the next year's group of students.

Finally, as a K-12 leadership team, you can use this task to both model and assess whether teachers throughout the system are working collectively to accomplish the ultimate task of developing learners who demonstrate identified essential learnings. For example, you may want to modify the K-12 Faculty Scaffolding Essential Learning Experiences Letter template (located to the left) and design your own system assessment.