Respect

For pricing and ordering information, contact Corporate Matters.

RESPECT is an educational training application for faculty and students of grades 6-9. It is designed for the collaboration of the whole school community to forge a commitment to an environment that is free of hostility and intimidation. The program focuses on violence, peer pressure and sexual harassment - each strong contributors to the kind of negativity that prevents students from achieving in school. Lessening the ill effect of these deterrents to success makes the environment a safer place for students to learn and faculty to teach.

Ask nearly any student or teacher whether or not they want a positive school atmosphere and the answer will surely be a resounding YES! We often fall far from this ideal. From decades of practice trying to achieve social reform, we know that change does not come easy. Those of us who promote it must come to terms with the fact that people of all ages fear what they most want. These natural resistances must be overcome in training if change is to be the end result.

We make this assertion up front because it is impossible to evaluate RESPECT without acknowledging that at first glance IT WILL MAKE YOU UNCOMFORTABLE. Why? Because we raise issues of sexual harassment, violence and peer pressure and 'put them out there'. Student and faculty participants are sometimes surprised by the strong reactions the training evokes within them, and must come to grips with the often equally strong reactions they regard among others in the group. In the service of helping participants see the whole picture, no pat answers are offered. Rather, the training challenge is to reconcile individual differences so that respect can replace antipathy. Heightened sensitivity and insight are necessary precursors to attitude change. If we circumvent the resistances evoked in training by avoiding issues that are controversial it may be possible to help participants learn the do's and don'ts of the topic under consideration but change will not occur. Facts must undergo a transformation for growth to be internalized.

RESPECT is based upon true events that occurred in a suburban middle school. There is nothing extraordinary about these events or about these adolescents. The students who enacted the dramatic scenes were offered little coaching or directing. Their scripts are the real voices of youth who find themselves in the kinds of difficult situations depicted in the video. The choice to use cinema verite was to ensure the believability of the content to an adolescent population and to the population of adults who teach them. Empathizing with the plight of these students is the first step in building respect. Engaging one another in open and honest dialogue is the second. Emulating new ways of behavior modeled in training is violence prevention.

Building respect is the work of the whole school community. Students and faculty evolve a cultural consensus in training that sets the parameters of a shared value system and a common language to communicate it. Different schools may draw different lines in the sand to define this consensus depending upon their cultural constituency. But the construction of a shared, positive, social system is always the goal of RESPECT.

- Wanda Dobrich, Ph.D. & Steven Dranoff, Ph.D