R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Do you remember this song?

It is always the first thing that comes to mind when someone asks me about respect. I wasn't even thought of when this song was made but I have heard it so many times. Even my children know it. Some songs are just classic!

I was so shocked (and a little intimidated) when Maria sent me a personal email asking me to join her linky party as she wanted to hear my thoughts.

Really? Me??

So here I am on Wednesday 

linking up to the Monday party. 

I am just fashionably late. Not overly late. 

I hope!

 

Respect.... this is a hard topic for me to write about. I feel respect should be the foundation of our society. Sadly, I feel it has gone the way of chivalry. It is now a rare occurrence when respect is shown. It is no longer "cool" or "sweet" or "in." Being respectful is seen as something only old people or nerds do. And sadly, I believe that we are all the root cause of this. 

Society goes through the shifts of being too strict then to lax and it seems to rarely find the happy medium. You can see this in parenting techniques. There was the too strict phase then the child-centered phase and now these children who think the world revolves around them are entering our classrooms.

I often wonder what life will be like when these children grow up. We are no longer retaining students who aren't trying. We are catering more and more to them. We are pressuring teachers to meet goals that seem unattainable yet provide no consequence to the student who doesn't even attempt to reach them. 

What happens to these students when a boss in the future expects something to be done and they decide not to? They will be fired and won't understand. 

The only solution that has been given is to teach character in schools but I wonder if this is enough? What if character is seen as only something required at school? Too many believe that reading is only necessary at school. You only find worksheets in a school. Society as a whole too often lacks character so are we trying to swim against the tide?

I believe we first must learn to respect ourselves and set boundaries. We must learn to keep a promise and to control our emotions. 

I simply LOVE LOVE LOVE this system of learning how to control our emotions. We must learn to put others before ourselves! We must learn how to handle when something is disappoint to us and do so in an appropriate manner.

 

I have heard so many amazing things about this book. I love the ideas in it and it is on my "to do" list for summer. In fact, I will be spending a lot of time this summer working on adding in whole brain teaching strategies to my classroom.

Create an anchor chart about respect at the beginning of the year. Discuss what it looks like, feels like, acts like, demonstrate it, practice it, reinforce it, and reward it. 

Teach students that respect goes beyond the classroom door. Make it part of their homework. Do something respectful outside of class, share it with us, tell us how did it make you feel, how did it make others feel? Reward it, praise them. 

Respect, share, repeat. 

Perhaps, just perhaps by teaching our students and our children that respect is important we can change the tide of society.

Don't forget!