Thank You!

I would like to thank all of you for your insight into communication and collaboration over the past eight weeks.  This class flew by for me and I know that it because of the rich discussions that we had weekly. I would not have been as successful in my coursework without you all.  I wish you all continued success. This is my second to last class to complete towards my Masters and I will be done at the end of June.  I don't know where you are each at individually on your coursework but know that there is an end insight and that you can do it when you think you can't. 

Adjourning

When I think about groups that I have been in there are a lot of groups that I have been a part of.  When I was in high school I was a part of the girls basketball team.  My senior year there was 7 seniors on the time.  All 7 of us met in 7th grade and played together on our school team, fall league team, spring league team and summer league for 6 years.  2 of the girls I met on my first day of kindergarten.  We all had the goal our senior year that we wanted to go to State and that we all wanted to continue playing basketball after our high school careers were over with.   Our season ended with us going to State and placing and all 7 of us were offered some type of basketball scholarship.  Some of decided not to continue playing after high school even with offers to continue to play.  Leaving high school was hard because it was going to be a change and something new.  Leaving this group of girls was even harder.   I had been with these girls more than I had been with my own family members due to our travel and game schedule over the 4 years of high school.  We a banquet after the season.  We were able to gather as a team and each of us seniors were able to speak to our teammates and family members that were there.  We were able to personnally thank everyone and share are favorite memories.  I think that this is important to be able to have closure in a group whether it is face to face, by email or a phonecall. 

To be honest when I leave Walden I think that it will be easy to leave.  I have not formed relationships with my colleagues that are meaningful to me.  I think that if our classes would have been face to face or even telephonically a different type of relationship would have been formed and I would have had more of a connection with my classmates. 

Adjourning with any group is important because it brings closure to myself indvidually.

Conflicts

I worked as a director for a Head Start program for 7 school years.  During that time I came into many conflicts/disagreements with staff, parents, supervisor, accounting, HR and even children. 

One conflict I remember was during budget cuts.  I was working on the budget of the program for the upcoming school year and found that due to increase costs in insurance, building maintenance and salaries etc we were not going to be able to operate all of our classrooms.  This meant that we would need to shut down a full center and/or a couple of classrooms.  When I brought the information to my supervisor he just kept telling me that "they" were not going to like this.  "They" referred to the Board and the President.   I kept telling him I knew this and I worked on three different proposals to present to the President and the Board.  Suprisingly the President and Board were accepting of the proposals and I did not even have to attend one of their meetings to answer any questions.  I was told that there was a lot of discussion because no one was happy about the situation but knew that a decision needed to be made.  They chose one of the proposals that they felt would have the less impact to the program.  This mean shutting down one of our smaller sites.  When we announced the shut down the local school district was not happy about this.  This caused another conflict which we had to work through, explain and justify why we were shutting down a site.  Within this one issue there was many different conflicts that arose. 

I feel that we looked at different alternatives, we listened from different viewpoints of the people and community that was going to be impacted and what it would look like long term.

The three different proposals were very thought out becuase I wanted to make the least impact on our program.  These are just summaries of what I can remember of what we proposed to our Board. 

Proposal 1: Shut down Site W.  Currently we do not have a staff person there and the position is advertised.  We would not have to lay anyone off.  School district is currently operating a Pre K program that would allow Pre K services to continue to operate in the community. 

Proposal 2: Shut down Site G.  Average daily attendance for the past school year was less than 50% .  Costs to operate the building was given.  High mainteance costs due to owning the building.  Has a waitlist of 20 children.  We would have to lay off 3 staff members. 

Proposal 3: Shut down Site W & S.  Currently we do not have staff at either site as both positions are being advertised.  School district is currently operating a Pre K program that would allow Pre K services to continue to operate for 4 year olds only in the community. 

Have any of you experienced the impacts of budget cuts and what were some of your solutions?

Communication Styles

This week we had to evaluate ourselves and ask others to evaluate us in regards to communication.  I found the communication anxiety inventory to show the greatest differences between myself and the other two people that evaluated me.  I scored on the elevated level and others scored me in the low and mild level.  This was a surprise to me but to me this is a good thing that I do not show I am uncomfortable when speaking but I feel it.   It will be important for me to work at becoming more comfortable with myself.  When I become more comfortable than I will be able to share more.  I feel that I may miss out on what is being said or I am not sharing enough due to myself being uncomfortable.  As for my listening style I am a people oriented listener.  Although this is a good style to have I do worry that I trust people too much.

As I look at the results of all the different tests it surprised me all the different styles.  Each style is unique in their own way and each of them holds their own benefit.  I think what is important is that we are made aware of the possible issue that may arise if you are only one of the styles and not a combination of all the styles.  I feel that in order to be effective in the early childhood field you are going to need to encompass all aspects of the styles for different situations you may encounter. 

WK 3 Self Reflection

Communication is prevalant throughout my day.  I feel that I do communicate differently with different groups depending on who I am talking with.  When I am talking to my four year old daughter and her friends I communicate differently than in a professional setting.  I have to be flexible, patient and understanding with everyone I communicate with. 

The following are three different strategies that I feel will help me communicate more effectively with any group. 

1.  Treat others as you would like to be treated. 
2.  Showing respect through effective listening.
3.  Getting to know children and families to help me understanding their culture and home life. 

All three of these strategies will allow me to be a better communicator.  I want to make sure that my biases are not present when communicating. I also want to make sure that I am showing respect to everyone that I communicate with. 

Muting the TV

I decided to watch an epsiode of Blue Bloods which is a police officer drama on CBS. 

As I observed the showed with no sound I observed a lot of facial expressions.  Many of the expressions to me looked like sadness (people crying) and concern (wrinkles in the forehead appeared when talking to another person).  Talking with arms crossed and a lot of finger pointing.  I also felt that a lot of people appeared to be serious.  There was not a lot of smiling during this episode and the characters did not seem to be having a good time. 

When I rewatched the show again with the volume on it was a very serious show due to the story line.  The storyline was about a lady who lost her baby due to being punched in the face on the street.  The cops were struggling with finding a suspect. 

This assignment allowed me to really look at how people express themselves with their non verbal communication.  It was actually nice to watch a TV show where the actors could use facial expressions to communicate what they were saying without actually hearing any words.  I think that many of the assumptions I made were acurate due to being able to read those non verbal skills.  When I lived and worked in Alaska many times the population that I worked with communicated with non verbal skills.  I still remember talking on the phone to staff members at a specific location and a question was asked and they did not respond.  I actually said you gals are going to have to respond with words and not scrunch your face.  Everyone laughed but now that I think back on it I had to learn a lot about what certain facial expressions meant in the region that I worked in.  I think that a lot of us would be surprised with how much we acutally communicate with our non verbals skills. 

Competent Communication

When I think of a competent communicator i think of my friend Patrice.  She works in the Early Childhood field and I have been able to see her in action when she is advocating on behalf of young children.  When she talks people listen.  She has a voice that people listen to.  She also is able to say what she wants but is able to bring it down to the level that people understand.  She doesn't try to sugar coat her stories.  She also is able to make people laugh even when there is a serious conversation happening.  Patrice also gets her facts straight and wants to have the knowledge of what she is going to speak about before she goes and does a talk.  

I admire Patrice and the way she goes about advocating for early childhood services.  I would want to model my own communication behaviors after her.  I would want to be able to gather the facts and knowledge of the topic and then be able to present it to people.  I also want to be able to make people laugh when talking to them (and making them laugh at the right times).  I feel that this is an important trait because there are too many times that there are conversations that become SO serious and heated that people need to be able to step back and loosen up.