Team Development

In my own personal experience it is most difficult to say goodbye to groups which are high-performing. I think about this in regard to the team I work with. We are very high-performing. We always get very high CLASS scores and our classroom functions extremely smooth. We have had other teaching teams come in to observe our class and use us as a model. We work very closely together through the year. In my team there are three teachers. I am the Lead Teacher along with a Family Support and Teacher Aid. We have very established norms in place where we each know how we should act in situations and with each other. We all have roles in our workplace and the part we play in our team. When the end of the school year comes we do not know if we will be in the same team again in the next school year or switched around. We put in our requests and hope for the best. I have been lucky enough to be in my current team for four years now. When summer comes it is a hard goodbye. We pack up our room and get all our personal belongings ready to go home. We then take all of our files to the main office and turn them in. This has been our closing ritual each year. It is hard when the group is high functioning because you work together to to achieve your goals through the year.
In the past courses when working on my master’s degree it is a strange feeling when you leave a class and your colleagues. You start off the class figuring out the expectations and navigating the coursework with the other students support. You also start to form relationships through the discussions and learn about others viewpoints. Adjourning is an essential stage of teamwork because the group will have finished the task and need to move on to new things bringing the experience they have learned.

Personal Conflict

I recently had a disagreement at work about responsibilities assigned in the classroom. We share a classroom with an AM and PM class. We work in teams. I have an assistant and then the afternoon has an assistant. We share a teacher aide who sets up our meals. This can be very difficult because the children in the two classes have different interests and we are constantly using materials to support their needs. This means constant collaboration between the two teaching teams. We were having issues with the cleaning of the classroom and who was responsible for each duty. We are required to have a meeting with each team every other Wednesday to discuss classroom business. This is nice because we already have a scheduled meeting where we have to sit down for an allotted amount of time. The two strategies which worked in this meeting were first writing everything down. This worked well because you could see who was responsible for what on paper. This was effective because it was very clear how many responsibilities each person had. It also was a written record to follow if the task actually got done. The other strategy on a personal level was compromising and volunteering to do a portion of the tasks which needed to get done. I think it worked well because others also started to compromise and take initiative.

I did use some of the principles of Nonviolent communication because we were all listening to the needs of each other and working toward peace in our workplace and coming to terms with a common goal. Through the practice of NVC, we can learn to clarify what we are observing, what emotions we are feeling, what values we want to live by, and what we want to ask of ourselves and others. We will no longer need to use the language of blame, judgment or domination. We can experience the deep pleasure of contributing to each others' well being.

NVC creates a path for healing and reconciliation in its many applications, ranging from intimate relationships, work settings, health care, social services, police, prison staff and inmates, to governments, schools and social change organizations ("The center for," 2010).

References
The center for nonviolent communication. (2010, 01 25). Retrieved from http://www.cnvc.org/learn/nvc-foundations