Character
Formation

gravitas_featured_programs_character_formation

Character Before Career: The Tradition Continues, now in an online format.  A lot of schools like to talk about character, but when you ask them what they mean or how they form it in students, you hear a lot of vague answers. For Gravitas, character is more than a buzzword. It’s our reason for existing as an institution. That’s why we’ve put so much thought into how teenagers actually grow in virtue and learn to resist temptations. We are even in the process of designing an app so teenagers and young adults around the world can access this part of our program.

The Gravitas Character Formation Program is backed by the latest empirical research from the Harvard Human Flourishing Program and over two thousand years of collected wisdom and practice. Here are some of the ways we cultivate love, hope, faith, wisdom, justice, courage, and temperance in the hearts and minds of young adults.

If you are interested in purchasing an annual subscription to the program for yourself or a loved one, you can do so by filling out this form. The program works for middle school students through adults. You do not have need to be a Stony Brook School or Gravitas student to subscribe. Invest in what matters most today!

Additionally, full-time students have other opportunities to grow in virtue:

Curriculum
Spark your moral imagination by reading stories of virtue and vice, discussing the big questions of life, and seeking wisdom in the Scriptures, history, and great literature. Cultivate the intellectual virtues that will help you reliably discern truth from lies. The Gravitas curriculum helps students:

  • Love their neighbor as themselves
  • Put their hope and faith in God
  • Discern wisdom from folly
  • Pursue justice and mercy simultaneously
  • Face dangers courageously
  • Cultivate temperance
  • Oppose pride and vainglory by growing in humility
  • Resist envy, wrath, and greed
  • Flee from the physical temptations of gluttony and lust

Self-Knowledge
Gain insight into the way God has made you through personality tests, strengths finders, and personalized counseling. You will learn to uncover your calling, feed your strengths, and address your weaknesses.

Growth Groups
Grow in wisdom, faith, and love as you receive intentional mentorship from an adult who is further down the road to virtue. Experience the benefits of vulnerability and accountability from your growth group peers.

Daily Habits
Practice the time-tested, empirically proven moral and spiritual disciplines that shape your character slowly but surely. Complete daily challenges that push you to grow from areas of weakness and reinforce areas of strength. You'll learn how:

  • Pray in a variety of ways: contemplative prayer, breath prayer, written prayers, praying the Scriptures, adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication
  • Read, meditate on, and memorize the Scriptures
  • Practice Lectio Divina
  • Serve others and effectively give to charity
  • Express gratitude
  • Seek and offer forgiveness
  • Safely perform a variety of types of fasts
  • Break bad habits and start new good habits of thought, feeling, and action
  • Give and receive wise counsel
  • Care for creation
  • Journal about your moral and spiritual journey
  • and much more!

Service
Do justly and walk humbly as you care for those in need in your community and beyond. Partner with organizations that know how to make a difference in the lives of the marginalized, the oppressed, the sick, the poor, and the lost.

Crucible Events
Leave your comfort zone and embark on wilderness and international adventures that test your courage, your patience, and your perseverance. Make lasting memories and deepen friendships with your peers and mentors.

Grow In Virtue

CURRICULUM

SELF KNOWLEDGE

GROWTH GROUPS

DAILY HABITS

SERVICE

CRUCIBLE EVENTS