Extended Family is fortunate to have the help of many wonderful speakers, community leaders with diverse backgrounds, who present lessons on a wide variety of topics for our Extended Family Leadership Academy (EFLA) programs. Judge Shaunathan Bell, Circuit Judge of Cherokee and DeKalb counties, recently spoke with EFLA students at DeKalb Youth Services Center with a lesson titled Ethics: What is it? Why do we need it?
Judge Bell’s talk began with a scenario that caught every students’ attention, “What if we had to take off our shoes at P.E. and I really, really liked your shoes, so when everyone left the locker room, I just took them? Maybe I swapped them with my old, cheap tennis shoes. Would that be okay? Why not?” This example of him taking another person’s shoes without permission, which all the students agreed would be wrong, created an understanding of the need for a moral and ethical standard, which leads to the reason we have laws.
He then went on to discuss the basic principles of ethics and the professions that use a Code of Ethics. By the conclusion of his lesson, all the students saw the value in using ethics in daily interactions with others. This included some difficult choices like telling the truth even when it could get you into trouble and helping someone even if that person has treated you unkindly in the past.
Judge Bell concluded his talk with three ideas – the same ethical and moral standards should be applied to all situations, using drugs and alcohol dulls your ethics, and sometimes doing the right thing is hard, but still do the right thing.
Extended Family Leadership Academy Lessons are designed to prevent children from entering the juvenile justice system, reduce recidivism among youth and adult offenders, and break the generational cycle of incarceration in families. When we are successful, we create safer communities for everyone.
Thank you for supporting Extended Family. For additional information about our programs, find us on Facebook, X, and Instagram @extendedfamilyhelp or visit our website at www.extendedfamilyhelp.org. Together, we are changing lives, one child at a time.