Resources For Educators

Welcome to Making Caring Common’s Resources for Educators, Teachers, Counselors, School Administrators, and School Leaders!

We offer strategies, resources lists, audits, surveys, discussion guides, and more, which we hope you will use in your school. You can review the list of resources below or click to sort by topic.

• Bias
• Bridging
• Bullying
• COVID
• CSN
• Caring and Empathy
• College Admissions
• Current Events
• Mental Health
• Moral and Ethical Development
• Relationship Mapping
• Romantic Relationships
• Social-Emotional Learning

Writing Character-Conscious Letters of Recommendation: Tips for High School Counselors and Teachers

These tips are designed to help recommendation writers—especially school counselors and teachers—focus on writing “character-conscious” letters of recommendation.

This resource offers tips and recommendations for teachers and counselors to write letters of recommendation focused on student character and life experiences. It offers a customizable letter of recommendation template which suggests a variety of information points that are important to colleges; applicant character and personal experiences and traits are prominently featured.

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This resource is part of our Character Assessment in College Admission Guide. The full guide includes:

• Character Assessment in College Admission Guide Overview
• Definitions of Key Character/Non-Cognitive Terms and Skills for Use in Admission
• The Thrivers Study: A Tool for Understanding the Characteristics of Successful Students
• “Why Character Matters in College Admission” Presentation Template
• Character Assessment Readiness: An Audit Tool for College Admission Offices
• Sharing Institutional Values: Examples from College Admission Websites
• Examples of Character-Focused Essay Questions in College Admission
• Examples of Language that Articulate the Importance of Family Responsibilities in College Admission
• Exploring Character Through Recommendation Forms: New Ideas for College Admission Leaders
• Ideas Worth Testing: Innovation in Character Assessment In College Admission
• Examples of College Admission Character Assessment Tools
• Deans Commitment Letter
• Character Assessment in High Schools: Recommendations for the College Admission Process and Beyond (for high schools)
• Writing Character-Conscious Letters of Recommendation: Tips for High School Counselors and Teachers (for high schools)

We welcome feedback as you engage with this resource and in this meaningful work. If you develop additional tools or wisdom to share, we hope you will tell us, so that we can share widely and better guide others. Please email collegeadmissions@makingcaringcommon.org to connect with our team.