The 80s: Founding of Heartwood
In 1986, Eleanore Childs, a criminal defense attorney and mother of seven, saw a crying need for ethics education for the young. She approached her children’s finest teacher, Patricia Wood, who was teaching first grade at a rural school in Western Pennsylvania and was seeing the same need. Together they enlisted the help of Pat’s daughter, Susan Wood, and two master elementary teachers, Barbara Lanke and Patricia Flach, to conceptualize and create the Heartwood Ethics Curriculum for Children. These women are mothers who believe the future must be nurtured by explicit teaching and habituation of ethical concepts and behavior.

The authors researched moral development and existing programs and settled on stories as the most effective way to teach character. They spent a year creating the framework of seven universal attributes, carefully choosing the multicultural literature and developing a process for creating curriculum based on it. The first Heartwood kit was completed in 1989, enabling the first of many successful pilots in the Pittsburgh area.

The 90s: Institute with a Mission
With positive results in classrooms and growing interest among educators, the founders applied for and received nonprofit status in 1990. Heartwood Institute was founded with the mission of promoting and providing tools for high quality, multicultural ethics education. The founders flew all over the country presenting at conferences and spreading awareness of the need for ethics education. They won funding from local and national foundations to develop additional kits, place the kits in schools, and evaluate their impact. While much media attention focused on horror stories, Pittsburgh papers, the New York Times Education Supplement, and a variety of educational magazines called attention to Heartwood’s program and to a national push for character education in our nation’s schools. The public was looking for solutions to social turmoil and Heartwood offered a respected, teachable approach.

Beyond 2000
More than a decade has passed and Heartwood’s work continues. In over 2000 schools in 40 states, children from preschool through 6th grade are learning how ethical behavior can contribute to a kinder, more compassionate world.

Our primary mission, spreading understanding and practice of Courage, Loyalty, Justice, Respect, Hope, Honesty, and Love, continues. We invite you to join us in our efforts to renew the ethical foundations of our communities.