6165 Communication and Collaboration, Week 8

During the past 8 weeks, you and your colleagues forged a collaborative learning community; you shared information and insights with each other and supported each other. As you prepare to move on into your specializations, take a minute and think about how your colleagues have supported you, how you have supported them, and what you wish for your colleagues as they continue on their professional path. If you wish, share your contact information so you can stay in touch and continue to encourage and support each other as you move through the program.

             

            During the past eight weeks I have had the opportunity to provide feedback and ask questions to a wonderful group of colleagues.  I hope that the comments and feedback I have given them have encouraged them to think more deeply about their discussion posts.  I have appreciated my colleague’s comments and questions on my posts, as they have enabled me to see situations from a different perspective.  I would have to say that the most thought provoking insights I received from this group of colleagues were the personal situations/experiences, which really helped me to understand alternate points of view and to consider how it relates to other situations.

I still enjoy looking at blogs of previous colleagues and sometimes leaving comments, as I have found significant value in the input of my peers throughout this program.  I plan on keeping this blog after the completion of my degree and my email address is jill.stein@waldenu.edu for anyone who would like to keep in contact.

6165 Communication and Collaboration, Week 6

This week you read about the five stages of team development: forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Consider the adjourning phase for several of the groups in which you have been involved. Think about which aspects of the groups made for the hardest good-bye. Are high-performing groups hardest to leave? Groups with the clearest established norms? Which of the groups that you participated in was hardest to leave? Why? What sorts of closing rituals have you experienced or wish you had experienced? How do you imagine that you will adjourn from the group of colleagues you have formed while working on your master's degree in this program? Why is adjourning an essential stage of teamwork?

I can definitely say that it has been very difficult to leave high-performing groups, and I still remember all of the emotions that were involved each time.  The most difficult group to leave was the first high-performing group that I was a part of as a teenager, my 4-H club.  I was on the board with a few other teenagers and we worked extremely hard get the club to where it was, and we even started a mentorship program.  We had the club running very productively and recruited more members than any other year.  It was a bittersweet experience because we were ready to move on but unsure if the club would be as successful in the hands of a new board.  Every year we held an event called Achievement Night, where part of the evening was spent saying goodbye to the old board and welcoming the new board.  It gave anyone in the club an opportunity to say thank you, retell a story of a time when someone helped them and what it meant to them, then included a photo montage of the past year.  It was so touching to hear how we helped and impacted others, I have never forgotten it and it was over twenty years ago.

              I would like to keep in touch with the group of colleagues that I have formed through the process of obtaining my master’s degree, and I think that technology allows us to do this successfully.  A blog, email and social media are wonderful, easy tools to utilize for the purpose of staying connected with others.  I still enjoy looking at blogs of previous classmates and commenting, it is a way for me to learn something new and stay connected with other early childhood professionals.  Adjourning is an essential stage of teamwork because it allows for closure, a chance to say goodbye, and an opportunity to celebrate the team’s successes. 

6165 Communication & Collaboration, Week 5

Think about any disagreements, or conflicts, you have recently experienced or are currently experiencing at work with a supervisor or colleague, or someone in your personal life. Share at least two strategies you have learned about that might help you manage or resolve the conflict more productively, and why these strategies might be effective. For example, could you suggest a compromise? Could you look for a broader range of solutions to your disagreement? Could you use some of the principles of nonviolent communication or the 3 R's to better help you resolve this conflict?

One conflict that I experienced recently is within my personal life.  My husband and I are in the process of moving across the country, and we left our condo in San Diego yesterday to head to Washington, DC.  After reading the resources for this past week I feel that I have applied some of the strategies.  One of the articles I read from the Center of Nonviolent Communication suggests not just saying “no,” but instead thinking about, processing and even discussing it if possible with the other person with whom you are communicating why you cannot say “yes.”  I used this strategy as we were working on getting all the things done for our move.  I was very busy and my husband asked if I could do something else, instead of just saying “no,” I stopped myself and thought of why I could not say “yes.”  I told my husband why and he responded “ok, I can run a different errand if you need more time.”  The communication was very pleasant and he came up with an idea that I had not thought about. 

Another strategy that we used was compromise as we decided on only driving one of our cars across the country so we could drive together.  Since we will not have our household goods for over a month, we needed to work together to figure out what we had to take and what would fit in the car.  We picked out our “must haves” which included my laptop to be able to keep up with school work, my husband’s uniforms for his job, room for our dog and our everyday clothes.  After we figured out how much room was left in the car we had enough room for both of us to have a small box of our own things that we didn’t necessarily need but that we wanted to have with us.

Gary Baran & CNVC, 2004, 10 Things We Can Do to Contribute to Internal, Interpersonal, and Organizational Peace. Retrieved from http://www.cnvc.org/Training/10-steps-peace

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

The Center for Nonviolent Communication. (n.d.). The center for nonviolent communication. Retrieved from http://www.cnvc.org/

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/