About the Initiative

Character is an action, not a feeling or an emotion. It starts with how you are taught to share as a toddler, be truthful about taking that cookie, not taking that cookie in the first place, respecting your peers, elders and those don’t look, sound or act like you. How to handle breaking grandma's antique doll, keeping your room clean, etc. Matthew J. Norcross knows how good character makes a good person, and his life story is a great example of how you can implement these traits in your everyday life, as well as that of your students.

Core character traits are engrained at an early age and carry forward into adult life, which directly impacts upon one’s ability to work and function as an adult. This is what being a Phoenix is built upon, and Norcross is hard at work on a new speaker series for educators just like you, as well as your students.

In addition to a speaker series, we have also have a character education curriculum that includes books developed by the 7 Degrees of Change Foundation in association with High Point University's Stroud School of Education. It's an easy to implement, integrated program that can be used in school, daycare or home.

“The Phoenix” is one of the most iconic symbols in human history. Multiple cultures, from the ancient Egyptians going back to the 5th Century B.C. with Herodotus, where it symbolized consecration and resurrection. To the Greeks where it represents rebirth and renewal. In Chinese culture, it was seen as a noble bird that was able to judge the character of human beings and confer blessings on the righteous. In the fourth century Lactantius, an adviser to Roman Emperor Constantine-I, wrote that it represented the resurrection. 

In one Jewish tradition, the Phoenix was given eternal life because it resisted the temptation to eat of the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. 

Several early Christian writers drew an analogy between the phoenix and the Christian doctrine of resurrection and life after death. Clement of Rome, a first-century priest and bishop, wrote a letter to the church at Corinth in which he employed the mythological phoenix as an illustration of the resurrection of Jesus.