One thing that will never change is that people will always find a way to get on each other’s nerves. It’s impossible to stop people from getting on your nerves, so your goal is to minimize it. We do this by identifying groups of like-minded people with whom we share similar values and spending most of our time with them. To minimize the inevitable conflicts within these groups, we adopt social contracts. A social contract is an implied understanding of how everyone agrees to treat one another. The group doesn’t necessarily sit down and carefully craft a social contract; it develops organically over time. Schools, particularly classrooms, are full of rules designed to maintain order and establish a safe environment for learning. While rules are necessary, they fail to acknowledge how the people in these environments want to be treated. Respect Agreements provide a process for establishing how everyone within a classroom, team, or staff will agree to treat each other. Respect Agreements address how students treat other students, how students treat their teacher, how the teacher treats their students, and how everyone agrees to treat the physical state of the classroom.

This course teaches participants how to develop and use Respect Agreements to establish trust within a classroom or group.