Adjourning: The Fifth Element of Team Development

Over the course of my professional and educational careers, I have had the opportunity to be apart of many groups. As I work with these groups the final wrap up is always the hardest. I guess it is the hardest, it normally means the end and as we continue on our own paths. Working in groups, I had the opportunity to work with some awesome individuals, these individuals accepted my ideas, thoughts, and even helped to open my mind to the point of views of others as it relates to the goal we were all working to achieve. As it relates to the performance of the groups,  whether they were high performing or a regularly performance group, the relationships that were and are built make it harder to walk away. Working in groups, it was much harder for me to walk away from those group where I had made friends and the closing rituals that I have experienced made it even harder to say good bye. At the close of a project or course, especially when I was  actually going to a classroom, we would have end of project or course potlucks or we would meet at a near by restaurant to celebrate the end. All of this was great I believe, because it showed that not only did we value the input of the person as a contributor, but we valued the person as a whole as an individual. So adjourning is always in my case has always been a bitter sweet ending.

Handling Conflicts

I can recall getting into a disagreement with one of my colleagues and it was about a whether or not the preschool school hall should have such a big gathering for Thanksgiving. See this co-worker was fairly new to our program and she just couldn’t grasp why we put so much work into our annual Thanksgiving Feast. To give a little insight, I worked for a preschool that provided services to low-income at-risk children and families and the area where our preschool was located was in a high crime area. So as we worked with these children and their families, we often enrolled children with many families issues such as poverty, lack of education, and incarcerated parents, and many came from single-parent homes. To make a long story short, this colleague of mine had never really experienced or worked with families with so many hardships that prevented them enjoying the finer things in life. So this was a total culture shock to her, seeing that she lives in and was raised in a more upscale area of the city. To her this was a whole new world and she felt that such a gathering for Thanksgiving was not needed. Since there was such a different in lifestyles for her, trying to understand the difficult circumstances of these families was really an issue for her. I tried to inform her that we make a big to do about our Thanksgiving Feast, because who are we to say that these families will even have a meal for Thanksgiving. All of the other colleagues were really excited about preparing for our Thanksgiving Feast and fellowshipping with the children and families that we serve. It was really a great experience and the families really enjoyed the meal, as we all sat family style and talked and built or formed relationships. At the end of the feast my colleague, stated that her eyes had been opened to a whole new world and to see the smiles on the children and families faces was really exciting for her and that she now understood why we strive to make sure that it is a great event. I also shared with her that we are always open to new ideas if she would like to share some with us for our next year feast.
Understanding this week’s resources about the third side, could have been helpful in this situation. Implementing them in this disagreement would have helped me to put myself in the shoes of the other person, which in this case my colleague’s shoes. It would have helped me to listen and acknowledge the point of view of the other person. Which in this case, my colleague had not been exposed to the lifestyles of others that were less fortunate then she was. This her this was a total culture shock.
To my Walden colleagues, I ask the question: How would you have handled this situation?

Communicating With Others

On a daily basis, I communicate with hundreds of people each and everyday. I communicate with my children, my siblings, my aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, colleagues, and the clients that I serve. As I communicate with each group of people, I communicate with each of them in my own special way. When I am communicating with my children, I use a certain tone and language, this language guides in my nurturing of my children. As I communicate with my siblings and other family members, I am more relaxed and laid back. I tend to use more of a low language and some slang. This type of communication occurs, because I am more comfortable with them and I know that I am free to be me. Communicating with colleagues and clients, I communicate in a manner that displays my level of professionalism. A high language is used as I work with my clients and colleagues.  So as I communicate I am able to adjust my communication skills and levels to reflect the current context.

Communicating through our body language

For this blog I watch a new reality show called Love and Hip Hop Atlanta. This is not a regular show that I watch, but as I flipped through the channels with the volume on mute, I was intrigued to use this show to help me complete my blog. Upon turning to this channel, I noticed the women's facial expressions. One of the ladies had a smurk on her face as if to say "I know she didn't" while the other ladies just sat looking kind of like "yep she said it". Standing in a circle, their body language suggested to me that there might be some sort of conflict going on. I assumed that because one of the ladies stepped back on one of her legs and then proceeded to fold her arms in an angry manner. The other lady that seemed to be in a conflict with her put her hands on her hips and then she rolled her head and neck and batted her eyes rapidly. And by being a black woman, without her even hearing the conversation, I immediately knew that she was pissed off. So after about 20 minutes of watching this show on mute. I decided to rewind it back to see what the conversation was about and just like I figured there was a conflict between two of the ladies and the other ladies were just on -lookers. Listening to them, I learned that one of the ladies is an artist trying to get her feet wet in the game of hip-hop and the other ladie is the girlfriend/babymama of a producer. The girlfriend/babymama has just learned that the potential artist is supposely sleeping with her man (producer). This was not a nice situation, because the women, were both upset and one tried to out talk the other. They used their body language to send messages of disapproval to each other.

I must say that this was an interesting task to engage in, because I have never really watched a movie or television show without the sound before. So it was interesting to try and use the individuals body gestures and facial expressions to try and figure out what is go on. It did make me mindful about making sure that both body gestures and facial expressions do not send negative messages to others. Just like words tells others about our feelings and thoughts towards certain situations, so does our body gestures and facial expressions. This little experiment will help me in my work with children and families because it will make me more mindful of the verbal and nonverbal messages that I am relating to them.

Effective Communicators

The person that I can communicate effectively in pretty much any given situation was one of my old supervisors at an preschool that I used to work at. I mean this woman can keep her composure and you would never know that she was really upset or disgruntled. She would make clear and direct eye contact and her body language showed no signs of distressed. She would speak in a calm voice and she would effectively state her purpose and the reason behind her message. I have always admired her for being an effective communicator. As an early childhood professional, I would definitely like to take a few pointers from her. I think that the first thing that I would like to take from her is her ability to hold her composure. I think for me, I can sometimes let my emotions show as I communicate with others. However, it really depends on the situation. The second thing is that I would like to be able to effectively communicate with others in a way that the receiver can immediately get the message that I am sending in a positive way. I would want to model some of her ways so that I can effectively communicate with the children and families that I serve as well as with my colleagues. Being able to communicate in a manner that is respectful to all is very important to me, because I want to be able to help them and the only way that I can help the families is by being an effective communicator. Communicating effectively will help me to understand how to help meet the needs of the child and the family.

Professional Hopes and Goals

After participating in such an intriguing course about diversity, equity, and social justice, I think that my main hope is that I am always striving to put my best effort forward as I work with children and families and all through-out my early childhood career. Reflecting on the knowledge that was gained during this course, I hope that I will never forget to be fair and just in all that I do on the for the children and their families. This means addressing my own biases first, before embarking on the task of teaching others. Sharing what I know  about diversity with others is equally important in my work. Having a genuine love and passion for the people that I work with and for is another hope for my work.

One goal that I have for the early childhood field is to make it a mandate for all early childhood teachers to incorporate the Anti- Bias curriculum in their programs. As I have been learning through my course work, the earlier a child is taught about anti-bias behaviors, diversity, and equity then they are more likely to develop pro-active behaviors that supports acceptance of all.

Last but not least I would like to thank each of my colleagues for contributing to my growth in this course. Reading your blog postings, discussion responses, and your comments has really helped to expand my thinking as it relates to the topics that we have covered in this course. It has also been a pleasure reading about each of your different experiences with diversity, inequities, and culture.

Welcoming Families from Around the World

My blog for this week is based on an imaginary scenario:

 I have just been told by the director of my program that a young child from Indonesia. Since I do not have any experience in working with families from other countries, I have decided to rely on some of the ideas that I have been learning about in my diversity class to help me prepare for the families arrival. So the first thing that I decided to do to was to familiarize my self with the country of Indonesia and it's culture. I used the internet to access this information. The second thing that I did was talked with my director to see if she could get pictures of the child her family so that I could post her picture along with the other children's family pictures and I also labeled a cubby with her name on it. The third thing that I did was talked to the children about our new friend that would be coming to play with us soon. I did this in an effort to help them prepare for our new friend to come. I read books about the country of Indonesia. Even though the classroom already has plenty of pictures representing diversity and abilities, I decided to add pictures that were related directly to the child's specific culture. I also asked the director to see if she could obtain a list of words that would help me to communicate with the child. These words were the words that the parents used to communicate specific needs such as when she is hungry, sleepy, and needs to toilet. I downloaded an app that teaches me the correct pronunciation of each word as well as other words. I also made sure that my music collection included Indonesian music. I also printed off the classroom news letter in the families home language and make sure that the information on the parent board was also printed in the language of the family.

As I prepared for this families arrival, I couldn't help but to think of the ways that the both the family and I would benefit. When the family finally comes to the program, it is my deepest and my sincere hope that they will feel welcomed and wanted. As I prepared for their arrival, I couldn't help, but to think about how I would feel if I was in their shoes. This is an scary and uncertain ordeal having to leave everything that is familiar to have to travel to an unknown land where nothing is familiar. I hope that as I interact with this family that I will learn about their culture and that I can partner with them to help the other families learn to embrace diversity. Including the children in the preparation process, I hope to broaden their understanding about  cultures, other than theirs. Most of all, I hope that I will be able to model acceptable and positive interactions with all of the families that I serve and that all the families feel welcome and accepted each and everyday they enter into my classroom.