6165 Communication and Collaboration, Week 4

For your blog this week, think about the similarities and differences between how you evaluated yourself as a communicator and how others evaluated you. What is the one thing that surprised you the most? Why? What other insights about communication did you gain this week? Choose at least two to share with others through your blog and consider how each might inform your professional work and personal life.

              The two people that I had evaluate me are my husband Adam and a previous coworker of mine, Danielle.  Danielle and I worked many years together, first at a private child care center and then at a charter school.  One thing that surprised me was that both Adam and Danielle scored me lower in the Communication Anxiety Inventory than I rated myself.  I feel that in some situations that I have anxiety speaking and I do not like confrontation, however I am happy to know that even if I feel anxiety ridden in some situations, I am not necessarily showing it.  The other thing that surprised me was that both of them for the Verbal Aggressiveness Scale and the Listening Styles Profile were in the same scale range that I came up with for myself.  My husband sees me in mostly social settings communicating and my coworker saw me mostly in professional settings, so to have both come out in the same range, makes me believe that I am pretty consistent in both settings.

6165 Communication and Collaboration, Week 3

Think about the cultural diversity you see in your colleagues at school, in your neighborhood, in your workplace, and also, possibly, within your family. Consider all the aspects that make up culture, including race, religion, political affiliation, sexual orientation, varying abilities, and so on.

•Do you find yourself communicating differently with people from different groups and cultures?

•If yes, in what ways do you communicate differently?

I find myself communicating differently when I feel I need to.  For instance, within my classroom I have many families who do not speak English.  I have learned some very basic and elementary words in Arabic, such as hello, goodbye, bathroom and sick, but I am not conversationally fluent.  Fortunately, I have a translator as one of my aides and I am able to communicate through her.  In the few instances that she is not with me, I have resorted to using Google Translate, pointing to pictures and reading body language, or a child who speaks both Arabic and English has helped.  It is not ideal but I feel that the families know that I am taking the time and trying to communicate with them even when I do not have a translator.    

Based on what you have learned this week; share at least three strategies you could use to help you communicate more effectively with the people or groups you have identified.

One strategy that I read about and will help me to communicate more effectively is to change my thinking, feeling and behavior.  I can change my thinking by learning more about different cultures and co-cultures.  I can change my feelings by working to have more pleasant, less anxiety ridden intercultural interactions that feel more comfortable.  By working to change my thinking and feeling I then can accomplish the goal of not only changing my behavior, but also becoming more mindful of what is appropriate (O’Hair, Wiemann, Mullen & Teven, 2015).

The second strategy would be to become more aware of my nonverbal behaviors, and be able to pick up silent messages in the way that they are intended.  I also need to be aware when learning about and trying to understand unwritten cultural rules of nonverbal communication that it will take time (Gonzalez-Mena, 2010).

The last strategy is in the form of a goal “A worthy goal is for teachers and other early care and education specialists to become culturally sensitive and begin looking for the meaning of parenting behaviors and beliefs they run across in the families they serve” (Gonzalez-Mena, 2010).  This idea makes me reflect on situations where I may not have looked for the meaning and motivation behind parenting behaviors.  The example of the child having a bottle in their lunch bag made me reflect on how important it is to be looking for the meaning of the parental behavior first, instead of making assumptions.  Before I understood this goal, I would have just thought that it was completely inappropriate.  Now, having taken the time to look through the lens, that the book suggests, I learned that the family may strongly believe in teaching dependency because they feel that the child will eventually learn to be independent on their own.   

References:

Gonzalez-Mena, J. (2010). 50 strategies for communicating and working with diverse families. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

O'Hair, D., Wiemann, M., Mullin, D. I., & Teven, J.  (2015). Real communication (3rd. ed). New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.

6165 Communication and Collaboration, Week 2

For this assignment, again consider what you have been learning about communication skills and styles. Then record an episode of a television show you do not normally watch. Watch the show with the sound turned off.

The show that I recorded and watched with the volume off was called House. 

• What do you think the characters' relationships are based on the ways in which they are communicating?

From what I can tell it seems like there is a main male doctor who is consulted and a main male doctor in the operating room.  Many other doctors, nurses and newscasters are questioning the two doctors for information about a particular patient.  The main focus seems to be on a teenager who has a large growth on his face.

• What are they feeling and expressing based on the nonverbal behavior you are observing?  What assumptions did you make about the characters and plot based on the ways in which you interpreted the communication you observed?

There is a lot of nonverbal behavior happening within the episode.  The main character is being followed by news media and looks very annoyed by it, not making eye contact with them, rolling his eyes and making uncomfortable facial expressions.  He also seems to be yelling at some of the other characters in a few different situations.  The teenage patient in the episode seems upset and embarrassed because people keep looking at and pointing at the growth on his head.  The main doctor seems to be confused in one of the scenes because he is holding up x-rays and seemingly keeps repeating the same question to other staff based on his repetitive nonverbal behaviors.  Most of the doctors look as if they are trying to console the patient, they often get the media away from his room, draw the blinds and when they are talking to him they stop and smile. 

• Would your assumptions have been more correct if you had been watching a show you know well?

I think my assumptions would have been much better if I knew the show.  The more you know of someone or a particular situation I think the better you get at reading their body language and understanding their personalities/relationships. 

• Write about your experience in your blog, including what you learned about communication from this experience and insights or "aha" moments you believe would be helpful to your colleagues.

I realized that the episode was going from black and white to in color and I could not figure out why until I watched it with the volume on.  The news filming crew was following the patient around as part of a documentary and when you saw it through the lens of the documentary it was in black and white.  I also found it interesting that for a moment during watching the episode muted, I did not know if it was a commercial or the actual show.  I did not have that problem at all when the volume was on.  Not being able to hear what the characters were saying and not hearing the sound effects with music took most of the drama out of it for me.  Although it was interesting to watch how much you are able to predict from someone's body language.

6165 Communication and Collaboration, Week 1

Think of someone (e.g., family member, celebrity, politician, friend, or professor) who demonstrates competent communication within a particular context. What behaviors does this person exhibit that make him or her effective? Would you want to model some of your own communication behaviors after this person? Why or why not?

For this assignment I decided to select Robyn O'Brien who is an advocate in the food industry and is called “food’s Erin Brockovich” by Bloomberg and the New York Times.  For ten years, she has helped lead a food awakening among consumers, corporations and political leaders (http://robynobrien.com/about-robyn-obrien).  I am not only a fan of what she represents but also I enjoy listening to her and reading what she writes.  Robyn is an effective speaker, speaking very eloquently and usually starting with a personal story which allows the audience to connect to the topic.  She is a former financial and food industry analyst who is very well versed, and is a confident speaker because she is educated and stays current on all relevant food industry topics.  All of these qualities I would emulate and they make her a very effective communicator both in speaking and writing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rixyrCNVVGA

http://robynobrien.com/