Suggest Bill Bennett, Book of Virtues
Moosebites build haracter.
Do you like heese? I love heese!
There once was a man from Nantucket...
Oh, wait...you said for the classroom...never mind.
THE WORLDS NEED
Ella Wheeler Wilcox
O many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
While just the art of being kind
Is all the sad world needs.
What's the age range of the kids you're teaching?
One tried and true favorite is Horatio at the Bridge usually excerpted from Macauley's longer poem Horatius :
http://www.englishverse.com/poems/horatius
If this is too militant, there are many other poems from the same era positively presenting human virtues, before western civilization descended into multicultural indifference. Some of these are to be found by browsing the works of Arnold, Ruskin, Macauley, Tennyson, Browning, Emerson. Not to be overlooked are poems of an earier generation such as Donne , George Herbert and others.
Little Things Count
Little drops of water,
Little grains of sand,
Make the mighty ocean
And the pleasant land.
Little deeds of kindness,
Little words of love,
Help to make earth happy
Like the Heaven above.
-Ebenezer Cofham Brewer
The American Citizens Handbook 1968 p476
Don't know if this is what you're looking for.
Robert Louis Stevenson
http://www.emule.com/poetry/?page=overview&author=55
No man survives when freedom fails,
the best men rot in filthy jails,
and those who cry appease, appease
are hanged by those they tried to please.'
Hiram Mann
I suggest finding a better text. The one above seems a little crude.
Leda, your turn.
I would highly recommend the Robert Service poems.
"Before the gates of excellence the High gods have placed sweat. Long and rough is the road thereto, but once it has been reached, then there is ease; then there is ease, though grievously hard in the winning."--Hesiod, Works and Days
"The quest of the Inner Ring will break your hearts unless you break it. But if you break it, a surprising result will follow. If in your working hours you make the work your end, you will presently find yourself all unawares inside the only circle in your profession that really matters. You will be one of the sound craftsmen, and other sound craftsmen will know it. "--C.S. Lewis, The Inner Ring
probably best for early teen males:
"If"
by Rudyard Kipling
http://www.swarthmore.edu/~apreset1/docs/if.html
and on the issue of paying attention to details (and the disasters that
follow ignoring them)
the old saw about "for the want of a nail, the shoe was lost..."
http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/464
(I think it's a saw from earlier than Franklin)
The Village Blacksmith
UNDER a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.
His hair is crisp, and black, and long,
His face is like the tan;
His brow is wet with honest sweat,
He earns whate'er he can,
And looks the whole world in the face,
For he owes not any man.
Week in, week out, from morn till night,
You can hear his bellows blow;
You can hear him swing his heavy sledge,
With measured beat and slow,
Like a sexton ringing the village bell,
When the evening sun is low.
And children coming home from school
Look in at the open door;
They love to see the flaming forge,
And hear the bellows roar,
And catch the burning sparks that fly
Like chaff from a threshing-floor.
He goes on Sunday to the church,
And sits among his boys;
He hears the parson pray and preach,
He hears his daughter's voice,
Singing in the village choir,
And it makes his heart rejoice.
It sounds to him like her mother's voice,
Singing in Paradise!
He needs must think of her once more,
How in the grave she lies;
And with his hard, rough hand he wipes
A tear out of his eyes.
Toiling,---rejoicing,---sorrowing,
Onward through life he goes;
Each morning sees some task begin,
Each evening sees it close;
Something attempted, something done,
Has earned a night's repose.
Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend,
For the lesson thou hast taught!
Thus at the flaming forge of life
Our fortunes must be wrought;
Thus on its sounding anvil shaped
Each burning deed and thought.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow