Please copy onto a separate piece of paper. Be sure to put your name in the right hand corner of your paper. Title your paper "Respect". After you have completed the assignment, return it to the Teacher.

We all need and deserve to be respected. However, we cannot respect others when we do not respect ourselves. When you are rude, put people down, talk negatively, or insult people, you are hurting your respect for yourself as well as for others.

Everyone needs to feel good about themselves in order to get along with others. When someone does not feel good about himself or herself, he or she speaks and acts in ways that hurts others. When you don’t feel good about yourself, everyone loses.

We all have bad days. No one is immune to having things go wrong. That is why we always have to remember to treat people with respect, even if we are not feeling very good about ourselves, or can tell that they may not be feeling much respect for themselves. When you automatically treat people with respect, you help everyone feel better about themselves.

How can I treat people with respect automatically?

1. Ignore them when they say or do something that hurts my feelings.
   

2. Don’t argue or fight with someone who is obviously not feeling good about him/herself.
   
3. Overlook it when someone is trying to tease me to get me mad.
   
4. Don’t say things in anger – count to ten before I speak or don’t say anything until the anger has passed.
   
5. Don’t say negative things. I have a right to my opinions, but I do not have the right to express it.
   
6. Always try to think of everyone as doing the best they can – see everyone as the best that they can be.
   
7. Put myself in the other person’s place and try to understand what their point-of-view is.
   
8. Treat others as I would like to be treated.

This is what I said/did that showed disrespect to my classmates: _______________

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I understand that one of the major expectations in this classroom is to respect others. I will work harder to abide by that policy in the future.

Please sign and date the bottom of your paper before turning it in.