WHAT IS COMPANIONSHIP AND HOW TO PROMOTE IT: 10 KEYS - ECONOMÍA - 2025

The fellowship is a friendly relationship of solidarity and cooperation among peers, for example, peer of the same school class. It is a bond that exists between people in a harmonious and reciprocated way.

When we make a child a good companion for another, we seek to promote in him an empathic attitude of understanding, support and help in a selfless and caring way. Fellowship is based on the collaboration of all members of the group.

The education of companionship as a value

Every day it becomes more important to build a more egalitarian, tolerant and inclusive society, where all people have the opportunity to participate and contribute to collective improvement.

In all this, education in values ​​takes on great importance. There is room for everyone in education in values: students, parents, teachers. The entire educational community and the entire society in general.

Values ​​education focuses on educating in the moral and civic spheres to form responsible citizens, who respect others, are democratic, with ideas of solidarity and inclusion.

What does companionship entail?

Fostering companionship involves many other things. It involves working as a team, learning cooperatively, leaving aside individualism.

Being a good partner implies being in solidarity with the people around you and showing prosocial behavior towards them.

In a learning based on companionship, each member of the group cares about himself but also about his peers.

The subject considers that he is an important part in the development of his companions, just as his companions are fundamental to his.

On the other hand, when there is exclusively self-based, individualistic and competitive learning, the interaction between group members is not taken into account as a learning factor.

Signs

When fellowship is fostered among students, they care for each other, work and learn together, take each other into consideration, enrich each other.

Students support each other and complement each other and know how to respect their partner, because everyone has rights and duties in the tasks set.

In addition, when cooperative learning is based on companionship, different processes are set in motion.

One of the processes is cognitive, where there is collaboration between students and proper handling of difficulties. On the other hand, we find the motivational ones, with shared attributions and goals.

And finally, we find the most affective processes, where students find meaning in learning, increase their self-esteem and also develop the feeling of belonging to the group.

10 keys to promoting camaraderie

1. Work on empathy with them

A relevant aspect to promote companionship in children is to work on empathy. The famous saying of do not do to another what you would not like to be done to you.

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in the place of the other person without judging them, understand how they feel and how they act.

It is necessary to have empathy to be able to relate to others in an appropriate way. When we are empathic, we interact better with other people, we communicate better, we have closer ties and more satisfying relationships.

Empathy is a component of emotional intelligence, it broadens our perspective. When we develop empathy in children, we are making them develop their emotional intelligence as well, which will make them more sensitive to relationships with other people.

To do this, in addition to the daily example, you can do specific activities with stories, masks, riddles where they should put themselves in the place of other people, change perspective, recognize emotions and thoughts, change roles with role plays.

2. Encourage teamwork

A good strategy for fostering companionship is to encourage children to work as a team.

Organize the class in mixed and heterogeneous groups, where they have the opportunity to meet, to work together with a common goal, where they have to be understanding, supportive, tolerant and assertive with the opinions of their classmates.

In teamwork, face-to-face interaction between them should be encouraged, so that they also put into practice social and interpersonal skills, assume roles, transmit ideas and know how to resolve conflicts, make decisions helping each other.

To develop camaraderie, within teamwork, situations should be fostered and set in motion where students have to help each other, support each other.

3. Work solidarity and help others

Help between schoolchildren is important. For example, some authors consider giving and receiving help to be beneficial in performance.

Thus, when one student provides to another, this is correlated with high performance. But also the fact of receiving help does it.

Also, teach them to spend time with and pay attention to other people. When we foster solidarity in our students, we build on the fact that they must lend themselves to the other.

We must encourage them to help their colleagues in difficult moments, to accompany them when faced with problems and to help them find solutions.

We want them to be sensitive to the needs around them.

When working from companionship, the social integration of its members is facilitated, they feel more satisfied in the group and when it comes to belonging to it, violence between them is reduced and they are more committed to their peers.

4. Encourage informal relationships between them

A good way to foster camaraderie is to encourage students to get to know each other and bond.

Organizing different activities, proposing extracurricular activities or having children see each other in more relaxed environments (on birthdays, on weekend excursions, playing in the park) allows them to create more special bonds.

This is important because when a deeper relationship is created between the members of a group, the feeling of belonging to the group is very strong and therefore help and solidarity between its members is born.

5. Rotate the groups in class

One of the activities that you can do to work together as a team we have already said is teamwork. But within this 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 from the differences.

Each one of the children is different, with strengths and weaknesses, and knowing how to work and appreciate each one of them can be valuable learning.

6. Do not allow disrespect

Disrespect between students necessarily implies a lack of companionship. Never allow physical or verbal aggression between students. Any lack of respect must be intolerable.

Bullying would be the problem taken to the extreme. It is important that in the face of disrespect you act and not keep in mind that they are children's things.

These things need to be addressed together and resolved, but in no case should they happen without repercussions.

Any rumor, aggression, intimidation, threat must be addressed. Students who are victims of all this must feel supported and supported by the teacher and by the rest of their classmates.

7. Encourage good manners

Something as simple as being polite: say thank you, say hello in the morning, smile at someone else, return the greeting, say good morning.

These small gestures can make another person happy and promote collaboration and good understanding between colleagues.

For example, if you walk into a store or come to class and say good morning, or someone greets you with a smile, the environment becomes warmer and more pleasant and you are more likely to have a positive and collaborative attitude.

Saying good morning or afternoon when you get home or school and being happy can lead to creating a good atmosphere as everyone strives to maintain it.

It is important to make students see this so that a more proactive attitude towards others is promoted.

8. Work on tolerance

Tolerance makes more sense than ever in today's complex world. Tolerance becomes a key element when it comes to building a just, inclusive and intercultural world.

Working on 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 colleagues.

9. It favors good communication between them

Teach them to listen to themselves, the importance of listening and the effort it takes to listen carefully and be sensitive to the needs of their peers.

Good communication happens because they know how to listen to what others feel, think, what makes them sad, what makes them happy and what makes them respect it and help others achieve their goals.

Furthermore, fostering communication between them allows them to resolve conflicts appropriately and sensitively 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 already be observed in school, where numerical grades, finishing first, doing everything perfectly, has on many occasions displaced mutual help and cooperation among equals.

However, cooperative learning is a strategy with very positive results.

When working cooperatively, the person acquires an individual and collective commitment through objectives shared by the whole group and that have been agreed upon by all and that allow them to be a team to achieve the goals.

Cooperative work has proven to be more effective than individualism and competitiveness in the classroom.

When cooperation is promoted, the relationship and camaraderie between students is improved, they are more motivated towards learning and achieve much higher achievements.

References

1. Bell Rodríguez, CR Family and school: essential unit for cultural development. The role of family, leadership and companionship. Central Institute of Pedagogical Sciences of the Republic of Cuba.
2. Educational innovation laboratory. Cooperative learning: proposal for the implementation of a cooperation structure in the classroom.
3. Ministry of Education of the Government of Chile (2011). Teacher releases: companionship.
4. Poveda Serra, P. (2007). Cooperative learning implications for interpersonal relationships and academic performance. Doctoral thesis
5. Real academy of the Spanish language. Dictionary of the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language.
6. Romero Barea, GA (2009). Activities to be carried out to develop solidarity among students. Innovation and educational experiences, 20.