Finding the Meaning of Respect

During my almost 30 years of visiting thousands of schools as a Teaching Artist and Curriculum Consultant/Developer, I realized the need for an effective way of teaching people how to show Respect.  The notion of people treating each other with kindness, has always been very important to me, so I simply decided to practice what I had both learned and professed and  moved towards developing curriculum materials on the topics of respect, kindness, compassion generosity, understanding, bullying and empathy.

As I conducted research with each of my visits, I realized there was a step to the entire learning process for achieving intrinsically motivated, respectful behaviors that was more fundamental than simply asking people to demonstrate random acts of respect toward one another. That rudimentary and foundational step was getting people to recognize or see the value in another person.  If the curriculum materials I was putting together could achieve getting people to see the value in one another, then therespectful behaviors within the foundational materials that I wanted to see demonstrated, would naturally occur within all of the communities people interact.

As individuals, we genuinely and sincerely demonstrate behaviors associated with respect to things and people that we value in each of the communities we interact.  That idea became the boat that was gently, passionately and lovingly pushed from the shoreline in search of the methods that would allow people to see the value in one another.  That concept has become the foundation of the program We R 3C™ and the nonprofit organization, We R 3C, Inc.