Communicating Goodbyes

 

I feel like with most of my courses within this program, 8 weeks seems like such a short time. The same can be said for this course. I have learned so much and made positive changes to my role as an early childhood professional. I believe I will be able to take what I have learned thus far and apply it to my future roles as a Grade Team Lead this coming year along with developing and keeping positive relationships with my co-workers and the parents of my students. Communication and collaboration are extremely important aspects of any type of profession, and perhaps even just as a human being, and I believe it is essential for all of us to have some type of course on these two subjects in order to make the world a more positive and efficient place. I am extremely grateful for each and every member of my cohort for taking this journey with me and for challenging me to expand my thinking while developing more resources. I wish each of you the best of luck in your future courses and hope we can have the chance to communicate and collaborate again someday!

Thank you,

Emily

Group Assessment

I have been apart of many teams and groups as I have played group sports my entire life, worked different jobs that have required team-building and relationships as well as support from one another. I have found that the groups I have been in that share the most meaningful goal have been the hardest to leave. For example, I have been involved in many groups within my educational journey and none have been truly meaningful. While the projects have been interesting and some have been semester-long, it was never truly difficult to say goodbye to the group at the conclusion of our common goal. However, I have found this journey with my cohort has been an entirely new type of team-building which will be hard to say goodbye when my program ends at the end of this year. I have been able to build trust with each member of my program that I have had to the chance to discuss and collaborate with, even though I have never met them in person!

I also had a difficult time saying goodbye to my Kindergarten team earlier this month as I am moving up to first grade at one of the new schools being built. While they are all staying behind to continue Kinder, I was the one who had to say goodbye for good which was extremely difficult to do. That group of ladies helped push me through my first year of teaching and were there for me through all the ups and downs. I believe it was hard to say goodbye because we all had a level of trust with one another and relationships were established very early in the year.

The 3 R's

I recently had a situation with co-worker that put both myself and my entire team at a difficult impasse that left us all agitated and unwilling to continue communication with one another. We were discussing our upcoming Kindergarten graduation ceremony and were openly throwing out ideas and inquiries with one another to create a rough draft of what the ceremony would look like and how it would be conducted. During this discussion, seven of us, out of eight, were freely suggesting ideas and jotting down notes with the plan to simply get a draft going that we could refer back to at our next team meeting. During this conversation, one co-worker decided to take it upon herself and create an email that outlined exactly what she wanted for the ceremony in which she then preceeded to email this proposal to our principal without any of our approval or contribution. We did not realize this had happened until our principal responded back to the email, having included all of us in the carbon copy, with her input and ideas on resolving a few of the issues. We were all dumbfounded that this had happened and were upset with the entire situation and actually refused to interact with one another for the rest of the day. While the issue was eventually resolved and the ceremony went on smoothly, having a little flair in it from each team member, this week's resources would have made a profound difference in how I would have approached the conflict and which might have prevented the entire team from feeling how we felt the rest of that day.

I believe had our team utilized the resources we had this week about nonviolent communication and the 3 R's, we would have had a much better time resolving the conflict, if it would have arisen at all. If I could go back to that day in particular, I would have acknowledged the nonviolent communication methods and taken away my own feelings and emotions about the experience so that I would have addressed my coworker immediately following the returned email from our principal. Had it been addressed that day, there would not have been such a level of distrust and agitation from each of us on the team which I am sure affected our students, something none of us would ever want to happen. I believe I would have also implemented the 3 R's and understood that no matter how upset with my coworker that I was, I still respect her and acknowledge her thoughts and opinions and would suggest alternate ways for her to express them with the team. This would have also played into the response portion of the 3 R's while highlighting that we all share a relationship as the Kinder team and it should be noted that we must work cohesively in order to provide the best possible outcome for our students and their families.

While all of this situation is in the past, noting what could have been done differently based on the resources provided this week, I plan on taking this knowledge with me as I am the first grade team leader this coming school year. I am hoping to prevent any situation like the one mentioned above and to have my team know the importance of communicating openly and efficiently with one another. 
 

Communication Evaluation

After reading the description for the Application this week, I believed that I could properly identify myself accurately within the three categories: Listening, Verbal Aggressiveness, and Communication Anxiety. After doing the surveys, I realized that I am very much in tune with my communication skills as I have always been one to listen, rather than talk. I believe my communication anxiety has gone done from what it once was, yet I still feel extreme anxiety in a larger group setting. My verbal aggressiveness is almost non-existent which would explain why I would rather simply listen than argue.

After realizing how confident I was in my knowledge of my own communication skills, it was interesting to see how others perceive me. I asked my husband, the person who knows my communication skills on a similar level as myself, and a colleague at work who sees me communicating in a more professional manner. The results were interesting as my husband did not rate me as high in the listening skills category "because I talk too much" (according to him) and that my verbal aggressiveness was higher than what I ended up with personally as he says that I know what I want to talk about and make sure the task gets done. Both my results and his results based on my communication anxiety reached the same level as he has been a witness to my anxiety about public speaking as well.

My colleague's results on my communication skills were astounding and proved how differently we see one another compared to how we see ourselves. My colleague's results showed that my listening skills were much higher than what I received as a result as she said that I was always lending an open ear, even when the time did not permit it. Her results on my verbal aggressiveness was about even with my own results as she did not believe I ever insulted anyone or brought someone down to get my own point across, yet the most surprising result was her results for my communication anxiety. Her results rated me extremely low with anxiety as she says that I am always speaking out in meetings and voicing my opinions in order to make a change for my team. She said that it was something that she was extremely thankful for as I spoke out for things she was feeling, but too shy to say out loud. It was extremely surprising to see and hear all of this, but it made me more aware of how we perceive one another and how we perceive ourselves, especially when it comes to communication.