by Sean McManus
Staff Writer
In the first story of the second book in the Principle Woods children’s book series, “The Book of Courage,” Springer, the lazy bunny rabbit, dares Tipper to cross Busy Beaver Creek at night without awakening the mythical Bazaberber.
Tipper, the reckless and cocky squirrel, ends up falling in the creek and almost drowns. And after being rescued by Burly, the friendly and reliable bear, Tipper tries to convince all the animals in Principle Woods that he is still actually the bravest of all. His friends don’t buy it and the moral of the story is taking a dare is not brave.
The mission of the Mandarin-based Principle Woods company, started by David Minardi four years ago, is to “inspire and equip youth to live principle-centered lives” and ingrain the values of work, courage, honesty, responsibility, respect and fairness into children from kindergarten through junior high school.
The company is already in 35 schools in Duval County, including Hendricks Methodist Day School, Jacksonville Country Day, Rufus E. Payne and West Jacksonville. And it is a critical element in special at-risk youth programs in various Boys and Girls Clubs and the Communities and Schools Program sponsored by the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Now, Principle Woods is going national, having conversations with school districts in Texas, California, Mississippi and New Jersey. The idea is for Principle Woods to evolve into a comprehensive character arts curriculum that integrates original children’s literature with language arts, technology and visual arts that is all available via the web.
“Our goal is to have this resource be as much or as little of a school’s entire core curriculum as they want,” said Minardi, who helped grow Computer Management Sciences, Inc., a Jacksonville-based data processing company, through an initial public offering and and eventual sale to Computer Associates before leaving to be the youth director at his church and to eventually start Principle Woods.
“We offer a unique value proposition in that we can maintain the scope and sequence of character based education from prekindergarten through fifth grade using the same characters and same concepts, just adding a new dimension of critical thinking at each stage.”
And Principle Woods works with the school systems to make sure that its books help teachers meet state and national standards, such as FCATs.
“The beauty of what we are doing is that the principles are universal and can be integrated into the mission of each school, depending on what kind of institution it is. Christian Schools can adapt these stories to the Bible and public schools can converge them with lessons about community service,” said Minardi.
Principle Woods books offer something called multi-modality learning: CDs are made for audible learners, illustrations are modified for visual learners and for those who are more comfortable with tactile learning, Principle Woods makes giant stuffed squirrels and rabbits for use in the classroom.
“IQ is maybe 15 percent of overall intelligence,” said Minardi. “Different kids learn in different ways and we want to be able to help every child learn.”
One of the ways Principle Woods is doing that is by translating everything it writes into Spanish.
“Over 30 percent of students in the five largest states in the country are bilingual,” said Minardi, citing California, Florida, Texas, Illinois and New York. “If we want to be a presence in education it makes sense for us to be bilingual, too.”
Calling himself the least talented person at Principle Woods, Minardi is really the business development force behind the company, scheduling meetings with the people in charge of curriculum, character education and bilingual education in districts and at home school conferences across the nation. In addition, Principle Woods employs writers, editors, grammarians, illustrators, graphic designers, music consultants and curriculum advisors who take the books and create lesson plans around them, such as questions about the readings, crossword puzzles and games.
Kevin Shore, the illustrator at Principle Woods who has been drawing animals since he was a child, said that he reads the books and the pictures just pop into his head.
“The first book took about six months of back and forth between me and the editors,” said Shore. “Now it’s a little easier.”
And because 95 percent of all schools in the country have some kind of access to the Internet, and 98 percent of all homeschoolers do, David Whitlock, the husband of Principle Woods author Jennifer Whitlock, will eventually create an Internet portal so that all Principle Woods content can be delivered via the web.
Minardi said that for about $60 a year, an educator could have access to most of the Principle Woods curriculum online, two hard copy books and two books on CD.
Sandy Sivulich is in charge of taking the Principle Woods books and converting them into usable curriculum. She was formerly on the Caldecott Newberry Awards committee, the group designated by the American Library Association to chose the best picture and fiction children’s books in the nation. A former librarian and English literature professor, Sivulich said that parables make lessons more than just didactic, they make values resonate in our daily lives.
“It’s really edutainment,” said Sivulich. “Just like you grew up with Winnie the Pooh, we want to create characters who kids will relate to for the entire time they are in school.”
She calls it “affective domain,” or making abstract principles real.
“And I know the kids are responding,” said Sivulich. “When I went to Woodland Elementary the other day to talk to the teachers about Principle Woods, the kids didn’t want to take a break because they wanted to know what Tipper was doing next.”
Minardi likened the concept to the “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series, where the same template is applied to different values. He also said former U.S. Department of Education secretary Bill Bennett, author of the “Book of Virtues,” was experimenting with similar concepts. Asked whether he would ever consider a merger with Bennett, Minardi said anything was possible but that a more likely alliance may occur with the major educational publishing houses such as Prentice-Hall.
Minardi will be busy in the next few months, visiting educational leaders in San Antonio, going to a home school convention in Tampa and attending a regional character education conference in July. And, according to Minardi, his company will continue to explore other mediums such as television.