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

Who Am I as a Communicator?

I chose my husband and one of my coworkers to evaluate me this week.  The one thing that surprised me most is my evaluations matched up with the results from the other two questionnaires.  I have made it very well known to my husband and my friend who I have worked with for four years that I have anxiety when speaking in large crowds.  I figured I would rate myself differently than they would just because I see myself from a completely different vantage point.  It did make my goals related to communication very clear.  The aspects I chose to work on are also seen by others I am close to.  One of the other interesting outcomes this week was in regard to my Listening Styles Profile.  I fell into group 1 which is considered people-oriented.  It states I am empathetic and concerned with the emotions of others.  This listening style helps you to build relationships, but can interfere with proper judgement because you tend to be very trusting of others.  This was very profound because I can see myself in this description.  I am going to start analyzing myself at work and in my relationships and take notice of when I portray these attributes.  There may be times where I need to be more clear-to-the-point, or business like.  I really enjoyed learning more about my communication style this week and thinking about goals which will help me improve on a personal level.  

What Ways Do You Communicate Differently?

I communicate with many different people through my daily interactions. When I communicate within my family I am very relaxed and feel like I am able to talk about any issue whether personal or professional. My communication is very unguarded, and many times I bounce ideas off my immediate family for feedback. When communicating within my family the communication is different with my two daughters because they are also female and we can talk about “girl” stuff. many times the communication between my husband and I is about business related to running our family and is more of a partnership.

When I communicate at work it is in a very professional manner. I always keep my personal issues out of any communication. I become a very active listener with the families and children I serve, but also give input on the children’s education to the families. Many times it is a collaborative communication where we are talking about the goals of the children and working together. When I communicate with different cultures I adapt to their norms and try to respect their families customs.

TV Episode and Communication

For this assignment I chose to watch the TV show Malcom in the Middle with the sound turned off.  It is a show my daughters just started watching on Netflix and I had not sat down to actually watch the show myself.  Based on how the characters are communicating I believe they are all part of the same family.  There is  woman and a man around the same age who share a bedroom and sit at the opposite end of the table at meal time.  They have three boys very close in age also sitting around the table who seem to be the children.  The conversation makes me believe the parents are very upset with the children.  They are opening their mouths wide and saying something to one of the boys and their faces look angry.  The boy then also looks angry and holds his spoon up with mashed potatoes on it as if he is going to throw it at his mother.  They keep having a back and forth exchange which looks like they are arguing.  At the end of the conversation at the dinner table they all start laughing and then it goes back to the son who again looks angry and seems to be yelling.

I then turned on the sound and watched the same episode.  When the show started and the couple woke up the man referred to the woman is honey.  I was right in assuming the couple were married and the children did call them mom and dad.  During the dinner scene the boy was joking around with his mother and put the mashed potatoes in the spoon and acted like he was going to throw it at her.  The mom replied, “Don’t you dare!”  The boy then said, “I was not going to!”  This kept going back and forth until the youngest boy made them all laugh by telling a joke.  At the end the boy had his spoon up again and acted like he was going to have a food fight again.  

My assumptions were definitely wrong when I watched the episode with the sound on.  I thought the program was much more serious than it really was.  The whole premise of the program was very funny and that was something which was very difficult to tell without the sound on.  If this was a show I had been familiar with I would have known the premise and understood the comedic nature.  I then would have been able to understand the show better without being able to hear the dialogue.

Communication

When I think of communication and a good communicator the first person I think of is my mother. She recently died of cancer, and in part it has made me realize how much I miss the communication we had and just how good she was at listening and also giving advice. She was an elementary school counselor and used communication skills as part of her job on a daily basis. When I moved away to go to college most of our communication happened over the phone. I did see her quite often since the city I moved to was only three hours away, but we probably talked three or four times every day. I always felt comfortable bouncing all my ideas or problems off her and really appreciated her advice. I never felt judged and when I needed someone to talk to she was there to give advice and listen. I really noticed how much I cherished the relationship when I had two daughters of my own. She always listened to me talk about parenting in good times and times which were very difficult. I knew she loved them as much as I did and she collaborated with me about many issues which arose. I definitely want to model my communication behaviors after my mother. She was a very active listener and took the time to make me feel like any issue I had mattered big or small. The biggest attribute I want to model after my mother is I always felt comfortable talking to her and never felt guarded. If I can make the families I work with feel comfortable talking to me and know I do not put judgment forward, then I feel I am on the right path to making a difference.

Professional Hopes and Goals

I love this quote and wanted to share it...

"Teachers cannot hope to begin to understand who sits before them unless they can connect with the families and communities from which their children come. To do that it is vital that teachers and teacher educators explore their own beliefs and attitudes about non-white and non-middle-class people."
—Lisa Delpit
Other People’s Children

I work with children and families from diverse backgrounds teaching in Head Start. I have come to realize through this course how it is even more important to embrace all the cultures we come in contact with. My goal is to rethink different assumptions through the eyes of all the people who come from that cultural background. I also want to go the extra mile and make my classroom full of different items which represent the childrens culture.

My goal as an early childhood educator in regard to social justice and equity is to keep working in programs like Head Start which target low income populations. Many of these children are ELL, EI children, and are lacking in social emotional development. With these type of early childhood programs the children do have the chance to get ready for kindergarten and have a jumpstart on education. These programs are needed for equity and to give all children the chance they deserve.

Thank you for all your support and interaction through this course. I have appreciated learning with you and hope to see you in future classes!