How to Assess Values

I was planning a series of Sunday School lessons recently and I tried to apply backward design to it. At first it was easy, there were a few Essential Understandings that I wanted to communicate, and a few Essential Questions for the children (3rd through 5th grade) to ask themselves. But when I got to the bit for assessment I was really stumped. Part of it was because I was working within an existing framework with a very limited amount of time and a whole lot of content and with a few other people, but the other part is that what I really want to teach are virtues and a way of life, which are hard to assess. To be sure, the only true assessment of whether one learns a value or a virtue is to look at how they behave in their day to day life, and in the constant and minute decisions that life offers, especially in times of hardship. However, the times of hardship where lessons of morals and values are most valuable cannot be artificially constructed by a classroom teacher, they happen in unpredictable moments of crisis or sorrow. The case of teaching christian virtues is not directly applicable to public schools, although we do often teach similar morals. It did however remind me of our social studies textbook and how it talks about teaching democratic virtues and it made me wonder, how can we construct assessments for these? We can of course have them write about making good decisions, or have them behave virtuously in a simulation, but it is a sight easier to act like you possess a virtue in a classroom environment than to actually live by it as a lasting part of on'es being. Can one ultimately assess a child's true character? This itself may only happen on an informal level in our observations of the child's interaction with each other, are they kind? are they just? do they live their neighbor? do they do as they have been done by? In this way, knowing the student takes on an even greater role, that of assessing the content of a child's character. And a good character is perhaps the most important part of the child a teacher can tend to and help grow.