He fellowship Is a friendly relationship of solidarity and cooperation among peers, for example, among peers of the same school class.
The Royal Academy of Language defines companionship based on two meanings. On the one hand, Link between peers , And in its second meaning, as the Harmony and good correspondence between peers .
When we make a child a good companion of another, we seek to promote in him an empathic attitude of understanding, support and help in a disinterested and supportive way.
The companionship takes its base in the collaboration of all the members of the group.
The education of fellowship as value
Every day, it becomes more important to build a more egalitarian, tolerant and inclusive society, where all people have the possibility to participate and contribute to the collective improvement.
In all this values education becomes very important. In education in values all fit: students, parents, teachers. The entire educational community and society as a whole.
Values education focuses on educating in the moral and civic areas to form responsible, respectful, democratic citizens with ideas of solidarity and inclusion.
Encouraging fellowship involves many other things. It involves working as a team, learning cooperatively, leaving aside individualism.
Being a good partner means being supportive of the people around you and showing prosocial behavior towards them.
In companion-based learning, each member of the group cares about themselves but also about their peers.
The subject considers that he is an important part in the development of his peers, just as his peers are fundamental to his.
On the other hand, when there is a self-based, individualistic and competitive learning, the interaction among the group members is not taken into account as a learning factor.
When fostering fellowship among students, they care about others, work and learn together, consider each other, and enrich each other.
The students support and complement each other and know how to respect their partner, because everyone has rights and duties in the tasks presented.
In addition, when cooperative learning is given based on fellowship, different processes are set in motion.
One of the processes is the cognitive one, where collaboration between students and proper handling of difficulties is given.
On the other hand, we find the motivational ones, with shared attributions and goals.
And finally, we find the most affective processes, where the students find meaning to the learning, increase their self-esteem and also develop the feeling of belonging to the group.
10 keys to promoting fellowship
1. Work empathy with them
One important aspect to promote fellowship in children is to work empathy . The famous saying do not do to the other what you would not want them to do to you.
Empathy is the ability to put yourself in the other person's place without judging, understanding how you feel and how you act.
Empathy is necessary to be able to relate to others in an appropriate way. When we are empathic we relate better with other people, we communicate better, we have closer ties and more satisfying relationships.
Empathy is a component of Emotional intelligence , Expands our perspective. When we develop empathy in children, we are also developing their emotional intelligence, which will make them more sensitive to relationships with other people.
For this, in addition to the daily example, you can do specific activities with stories, faces, riddles where they should put in other people's places, change perspective, recognize emotions and thoughts, change roles with role plays.
2. Encourages teamwork
A good strategy to foster fellowship is to encourage children to work as a team.
Organize the class in mixed and heterogeneous groups, where they have the possibility to know each other, to work together with a common goal, where they have to be understanding, supportive, tolerant and assertive with the opinions of their peers.
In teamwork, face-to-face interaction between them should be encouraged, so that they also put into practice social and interpersonal skills, who assume roles, convey ideas and resolve conflicts, make decisions helping themselves.
In order to develop fellowship, teamwork should encourage and put into practice situations where students have to help each other and support one another.
3. Work solidarity and help others
Help among schoolchildren is important. For example, some authors consider that giving and receiving help are beneficial in performance.
Thus, when one student provides another, this correlates with high performance. But the fact of receiving help does so.
Also, teach them to spend time with others and pay attention to them. When we foster solidarity in our students, we rely on the fact that they must lend themselves to the other.
We must encourage them to help their peers in difficult times, to accompany them to the problems and to help them find solutions.
We want them to be sensitive to the needs around them.
When working from fellowship, it facilitates the social integration of its members, they feel more satisfied in the group and when it comes to belonging to it, it reduces violence between them and they are more committed to their peers.
4. Encourages informal relationships between them
A good way to encourage fellowship is to encourage students to get to know each other and to build relationships.
Organizing different activities, proposing out-of-school activities or having children see themselves in more relaxed environments (birthday, weekend excursions, playing in the park) allows them to create more special links.
This is important because when you create a deeper relationship between the members of a group, the feeling of belonging to the group is very strong and therefore the help and solidarity between its members is born.
5. Rotate the groups in class
One of the activities you can do to work on fellowship has already been said that it is teamwork. But within it and cooperative learning, a good key is group rotation.
If each time you do an activity the groups are different (different pairs, groups of three or six, that is, varying each time), you allow each of them to learn the differences.
Each one of the children is different, with virtues and defects, and knowing how to work and appreciate each one of them, can be a valuable learning.
6. Do not allow disrespect
Disrespect among students necessarily implies a lack of fellowship. Never allow physical or verbal aggression among students. Any disrespect must be intolerable.
Bullying would be the problem to the extreme. It is important that before the lack of respect you act and that you do not have in mind that they are things of children.
These things must be addressed among all and resolved, but in no case should they pass without any repercussion.
Any rumor, aggression, intimidation, threat must be addressed. The students who are victims of all this must feel clothed and supported by the teacher and the rest of their classmates.
7. Encourage good manners
Something as simple as being polite: to say thanks, to greet in the morning, to smile at another person, to return the greeting, to say good morning.
These small gestures can make someone happy and promote collaboration and good understanding between peers.
For example, if you enter a store or come to class and say good morning, or someone greets you with a smile, the atmosphere becomes more warm and pleasant and you are more likely to have a positive and collaborative attitude.
Giving good days or good evenings when arriving home or school and being happy can lead to creating a good atmosphere and that all strive to maintain it.
It is important to have students see this in order to promote a more proactive attitude toward others.
8. Work Tolerance
Tolerance makes more sense than ever in the complexity of today's world. Tolerance becomes a key element in building a just, inclusive and intercultural world.
Working tolerance involves respecting the beliefs and ideas of the other person, being respectful and considerate of others.
If there is no tolerance, there can hardly be good relationships with peers.
9. Promotes good communication between them
Teach them to listen, the importance of listening and the effort that requires listening carefully and being sensitive to the needs of their peers.
A good communication happens because they know how to listen to what others feel, think, what makes them sad, what makes them happy and respect them and help others achieve their goals.
In addition, encouraging communication between them allows them to resolve conflicts in an appropriate manner and responsive to the needs of others.
10. Do not promote competitiveness, promote cooperation
Today, competitiveness is one of the core values in society. This competitiveness can be observed already in the school, where the numerical notes, the finishing first, doing everything perfect has often superseded mutual aid and cooperation between equals.
However, cooperative learning is a strategy with very positive results.
When working cooperatively, the individual acquires an individual and collective commitment through objectives shared by the whole group and that have been agreed among all and that allow them to be a team to achieve the goals.
Cooperative work has proven to be more effective than individualism and competition in the classroom.
When cooperation is promoted, it improves the relationship and fellowship among students, is more motivated towards learning and achieves much higher achievements.
For example, one of the methods that can be used in cooperative learning is mentoring or peer mentoring, which is how students acquire knowledge by helping and supporting each other.
To foster partnership and prevent problems of school bullying, it is necessary to work together school and family.
To do this, the family should be involved from the beginning, with school meetings, interviews between parents and teachers, with information about each student, talking about how it is, showing the progress of each one, etc.
In order to work in partnership and values education with children, a network between the family and the school is necessary in the same direction.
School and family are the two most important institutions in the socio-emotional development of the child and must ensure the good development of all its members.
We must bear in mind that, above all, fellowship should be based on the well-being of the group, the happiness of its members and the unity and cohesion of the group.
And you, what do you propose to promote companionship?
References
- Bell Rodríguez, C. R. Family and school: an essential unit for cultural development. The role of the family, leadership and fellowship. Central Institute of Pedagogical Sciences of the Republic of Cuba.
- Duncan, P. (2008). Resentments of parents: how to transform problems into fellowship. Adventist Review of Education, 26, 29-32.
- Laboratory of educational innovation. Cooperative learning: proposal for the implementation of a cooperation structure in the classroom.
- Martínez Medina, F. (2009). Cooperative learning as a teaching-learning strategy. Innovation and educational experiences.
- Ministry of Education of the Government of Chile (2011). Teaching communications: the companionship.
- Poveda Serra, P. (2007). Implications of cooperative learning in interpersonal relationships and academic performance. PhD thesis.
- Royal Academy of the Spanish Language. Dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language.
- Romero Barea, G.A. (2009). Activities to carry out to develop solidarity among students. Innovation and educational experiences, 20.
- Valdebenito Zambrano, V., and Duran Gisbert, D. (2013). Peer tutoring as a powerful learning resource among students: effects, fluency and reading comprehension. Educational Perspective, 52, 2, 154-176.