Reflecting on Communication in the Early Childhood Field

Week 8

It is amazing to me how each 8 weeks go by so quickly. Personally so much has happened.  I have changed jobs, had my third child, lost my grandmother to cancer and yet I keep on moving forward with this journey. I have learned so much from the course material and even more from each of you. I know that to really be an effective communicator one must also be an active listener.  I learned that I needed to be a better listener.  As a director and as a mother I feel that I am constantly multitasking but to really be able to listen I need to stop sometimes and really LISTEN. 

Each week we have had the opportunity to expand our knowledge in the field and enhance our learning by sharing our views and personal experiences.  I hope that I have been able to share with each of you as much as I have gained.  This course is the last of this section before we move on to our specializations.  I wish you all best success and I look forward to continuing with those of you have chosen the specialization of Teaching Adults in the Early Childhood field.

Thank you.

Week 6 Blog

Of the five stages of team development the adjourning stage is when the project is wrapping up and the members of the team begin to go in different directions (Abudi, 2010).  As I think back about projects that I was a part of and recall this part of the stages of team development I think about times that the team was a well-functioning team and times in which the team didn’t work so well together.  I would have to say it was the teams that worked well together and had high emotions involved that made it hardest to say good bye.  My greatest memory from a team that I became a part of was the preschool that I worked at in my hometown.  I had only been a part of the team for about a year.  During that year our director had left and I had become the acting director and one of our teachers also suffered a tremendous loss as she lost her first born during labor and delivery.   As I pulled the team together and kept everyone on track I had decided to interview for the Director position.  At the same time my husband had accepted a position that would end up relocating us to where we are today.  As I delivered the news to everyone in tears my team quickly began to plan my final day.  At the last staff meeting the surprised me with a final pot luck and a scrapbook.  The scrapbook was amazing it had pictures of my children, each teacher and their classroom, and well wishes from parents and teachers.  My last day there was filled with tears.  It was a wonderful bunch of ladies.

Adjourning is an essential part of teamwork as it gives closure.  As I end my journey and my pursuit to obtain my Masters I imagine that I will send out a very sincere thank you to everyone.  I think we have all learned so much from each other and our stories have inspired us all.

Abudi, G. (2010). The five stages of team development: A case study. Retrieved from http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/the-five-stages-of-team-development-a-case-study.html

Nonviolent Communication and Conflict Management

This coming week at the Preschool we are expecting corporate visitors.  We have been preparing for the past couple of weeks, fine tuning everything that has been introduced over the past six months. There has been a very big quality initiative with classroom, curriculum, and finally interactions.  Last week four of the thirteen centers were chosen to be visited and mine was one of them.  As a final step we toured each other’s centers and made suggestions or brought back ideas for our own.  From the feedback I was given my two year old classroom needs to step up a bit.  I know from past conversations this teacher’s immediate reaction will be on the defense and will not be open to what she needs to hear.  From what I have learned this week I want to take the NVC approach.  I know that I need to take the following steps with her:

·         I need to express to her what I want to see in her classroom.  I also want to make sure that she knows that my ideas are only suggestions and that I value her opinion and she is free to make her own choices as long as the overall goal is met.

As I delivered my message she immediately became defensive. Her response included statements like we have to do what everyone else is doing, what they say goes, and I don’t have time to do all of this.  I continued to reassure her that we are working together as a team and no we don’t have to do exactly what everyone else does.  The ideas are suggestions but the goal is the same.  I think she felt better and I did see some changes being made when I left Friday afternoon.  I do see how making a connection with this teacher was successful and both of our needs are being met  ( http://www.cnvc.org/ ).

I guess I will see on Monday and ultimately how it goes on Wednesday.

http://www.cnvc.org/

Who Am I as a Communicator?

The two people that evaluated me were my husband and my Assistant Director at work. These two people are probably the two adults that I spend most of my time with if you are to consider time and home and time at work. As I looked back over the results similarities of the scores were that I fell in the same range of both the listening style and verbal aggressiveness. The differences were that my husband scored me higher but same range in the verbal aggressiveness and lower in the communication anxiety. When I read the results of how he scored me differently I was a little surprised at first but then as I thought over the results I realized that maybe it was just my comfort zone as to how I both communicated and listened to others. At home I feel most comfortable and do not have a fear of how I communicate. I know that I have unconditional acceptance.  At work I know that I have to be cautious of how I say things and also struggle a bit with public speaking.  My anxieties with public speaking are less then better I know my audience and the subject matter that I am speaking about.  My anxiety also settles down once I have begun my delivery.

My scores vs. my husband

                        Communication Anxiety – Elevated / Moderate

                        Listening Styles – People Oriented

                        Verbal Aggressiveness – Moderate

When I was younger and living at home with my parents my dad would say when it came to arguing I had all the courage in the world and hoped that I would take that confidence and apply it to the outside world.  However, when it comes to public speaking I lose most of my confidence.  Just thinking about getting up in front of a group of people or answering a question in a meeting or classroom gets my heart beating faster.  Unfortunately, it is this fear that I feel holds me back in life.  It has kept me from doing many things that I would probably be very successful at.

Cultural Diversity

We recently had a family enroll that is from India.   One of the most significant cultural differences would be language.  The father speaks English very well however their four year old son that will be attending our pre-k program does not speak English unless prompted to say specific words such as hello and goodbye.

Three strategies that we could use to help us communicate more effectively with this family are:

1.        We asked the father to please provide us with words in both English and Hindi that we could use with their son as well as for to recognized words that he would be using.

2.       We will create a picture board so that he can point to specific places such as the bathroom or water fountain or items such as blocks (to play with) or food when he is hungry).

3.        We will have a day for the children to bring in their favorite toy to share with others that is special to their family or their culture.   I hope that an activity such as this will acknowledge differences and show commonalities for the children.

When I think about how trying these next few days, weeks, or months, may be for this little guy I am reminded of Bennett's Platinum Rule(Beebe , Beebe, & Redmond, 2011. P. 114)  and think of how I would want my own children to be treated if the situation was reversed and my family was the newly enrolled family.
 .

Beebe, S. A., Beebe, S. J., & Redmond, M. V. (2011). Interpersonal communication: Relating to others (6th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Chapter 4, "Interpersonal Communication and Diversity: Adapting to Others" (pp. 85–114).

Communication Skills: Language, Nonverbal, Listening

I chose to watch one of the shows that my husband usually watches, Parks and Rec.  The first time I watched the episode I watched closely to facial expressions and body language to see if I could determine relationships or see if I could tell what the characters were feeling.  I thought that without the verbal, pitch, and tones it seemed like the characters were talking about something very serious.  After watching a while, I started the show from the beginning and watched a second time with the sound on.  The biggest difference that I noticed was that with sound I was then able to detect the sarcasm in the characters tone which made the nonverbal facial expressions seem not so serious.  Nonverbal communication can also function as contracting behavior in which it conveys the opposite of one’s verbal message. (O’Hair & Wiemann, 2009, p.105)

Both verbal and nonverbal are important to communication.  Each can provide information without the other but as I saw with this week’s assignment you can’t just pay attention to one or the other.

O’Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2009). Real communication: An introduction. New York: Bedford/St.               Martin’s.

What Is Communication?

As a director I take on many different styles of communication.  I have to communicate with children, teachers, parents, other directors, and the list could go on and on.  I communicate with each differently, but with respect for each.  Part of effective communicating for me also means listening. 

Public speaking has always been a challenge for me.  The person that I think of that communicates competently is my District Manager.  She has to speak to us in many different forums.  We have conference calls, 1:1 meetings, and director meetings where all of us gather together.  On each occasion she is confident, her agenda is well planned and clear to all, she is articulate and motivating as well.  I would like to gain the same confidence that she exhibits.