As we go into high school, we start to develop our personalities more around our friends. Many different people have talked about how some students and adults lose their respect for themselves or each other. Respect is a thing that can come in many forms such as listening and paying attention to teachers, your actions, and your attitude while also having self-respect. It should be given to everyone such as teachers, fellow students, friends, family, and strangers. I asked a teacher and some students how much respect they believe is given at school and how to change it. 

 When first asking my friends if they thought respect was given at school, they gave a flat “No.” I asked freshman Ashley Perez to go deeper into the subject on how she feels. She said “Because some teachers do not pay attention to the students, it makes some of them think that they can do anything just because they aren’t getting in trouble. Same with janitors and staff, just because they are cleaners and ask students to do something some think they can do whatever they want because they are not teachers.” After that I asked her how she thinks people can show more respect to each other. She said, “People can respect people more by hearing both sides of something instead of one arguing and the other person getting talked down to it.”  

I then asked Esmerelda Munoz, a Spanish teacher here at West, her opinion on the matter.  She says how she finds students respectful as they greet her whenever they walk through the door. However, she feels the respect dying down with the usage of phones throughout her whole class. She said the phones “consume” their lives and distract them from the work they need to do or when participating in class. So, without them, students would be more respectful during class without phones.