Although New Hope School aspires to be the character education school of the North Jersey area, we do not overlook the importance of a core curriculum. There is significant knowledge that students must learn from preschool through middle school.

As parents and teachers, we know when students do well in their activities and when they struggle. Our job is to raise healthy, happy, intelligent, and compassionate young people. To do this we need to know something about those in our care.

In class, we usually do exercises where students can feel the pain or sadness of another person. Adults can easily feel the suffering of others by reading the daily newspaper. I often take a newspaper fast, avoiding the horror stories of children separated from parents in immigration centers. The evening news on television can make me cry as I see how refugees in camps barely survive from day to day.

At the beginning of a school year it is prudent to define the goal of education, especially for preschool to 8th grade students. All parents want their children to be intelligent and to succeed academically. But more important we want good, caring, respectful and responsible children. Such is the goal of character education.

"No one can give a definition of the soul. But we know what it feels like. The soul is the sense of something higher than ourselves, something that stirs in our thoughts, hopes, and aspirations which go out to the world of goodness, truth, and beauty." Albert Schweitzer