Promoting Respect as a Human Value in a Public School

Abstract

This is a case study report arising from a series of daily observations of the students’ behavior made in a primary public school located near to the capital city, Manizales -Colombia, where it was possible to notice the difficulties students had in order to coexist due to the lack of respect with their classmates, in group activities or actually working in pairs throughout the foreign language class. The aim of this investigative project was to counteract the daily levels of aggressiveness presented by the students among themselves, to promote good teamwork and respect as an important issue in a good coexistence. Based on the observed settings, the results revealed that it was possible to highlight the necessity of learning to live together and to enhance the value of respect for others creating new ways of working in terms of coexistence. Promoting human values in the classroom brought profit for children and was fundamental in primary school from their earliest ages, due to the school must play a leading role in the construction of integral citizens, for a better society. Some of the activities, contents and games after being applied such as bingo, lotteries, word searches, puzzles, animal behavior and others, generated a connection between meaningful language learning, good teamwork and human relations. These classroom strategies became new alternatives for a teacher training program that claimed for immediate and demanding solutions to improve children’s character development inside public schools.