Respect

Treating people in a positive manner that acknowledges them for who they are and/or what they are doing. Being treated or treating an individual in a dignified manner.
Respect is earned and is never just given. BUT, you must give respect to receive respect. Meaning when you interact with an individual you treat them with dignity and in a respectful manner as this shows your character as a person. And the respect will be reciprocated. You must always behave in a respectful manner as this reflects on you, your character, integrity and values of who you are as a person.

No one owes you respect until you have earned it, so there is no such thing as I will give it after they give it to me first. That attitude is a disrespectful action to anyone you interact with as it insinuates that you do not trust them to act accordingly, and implies that they "owe" you respect before you will give it. That will cause people to LOSE respect for you or never gain it in the first place. When you first meet someone, everyone is given the benefit of the doubt that they are a respectable individual. Questioning their integrity(respect) before you have even met them and "expecting" respect to be given without giving it yourself is insulting and condescending to that person and is judging them in a negative light when you know absolutely nothing about them.

Thus,
To get respect, you must give it. So respectful behavior should just be part of how you act as a person 100% of the time.

It means valuing each others points of views. It means being open to being wrong. It means accepting people as they are. It means not dumping on someone because you're having a bad day. It means being polite and kind always, because being kind to people is not negotiable. It means not dissing people because they're different to you. It means not gossiping about people or spreading lies.

A word describing the mutual relations between two people. This is something that needs to be cultivated on a person-to-person basis; a mutual relation cultivated through continuous fair and equitable exchanges of kind and politeful interactions, as well as having an understanding and consideration for each other as having the same basic human dignity. This cannot be obtained simply through age, status, experience, knowledge; it must be mutually crafted.

Noun: A value that once thrived but has nearly been eradicated in the name of free speech and expressing one’s self. Back when respect ran rampant people would keep their mouths shut if they didn’t have something intelligent to say but sadly today most people choose to express their “beliefs” even when they don’t have anything of value to say. Often disrespectful people make up for the lack of intelligence by resorting to juvenile statements such as “he/she sucks”, “he/she’s a tool” or what is ironically the all time favorite of the disrespectful, “He/she/you are an idiot”. The term “idiot” is often also used by the disrespectful to label anyone who disagrees with them especially if that person can actually speak intelligently on the subject or person being discussed.

It's a positive manner in witch you treat somebody generally most people are born with it but some need to be taught. showing that the other person is just as important as yourself.

Is a quality that is highly lacking into todays society & something everyone expects, but has no willingness to show.

When your teacher told you to learn the meaning of it, I don't think this is what he meant.