End of Course EDUC 6165

I thought this picture was a good representation of some of the skills we all learned throughout this course. Thank you pinterest!

 

 

Best of luck to everyone as you continue on your own educational journey. Wishing everyone warm holiday wishes.

 

Communication Conflict

Over the holiday I spent a good amount of time with my parents, I love them, but 5 full days of them can be a bit much.  I experienced many communication conflicts over those 5 days. So for this assignment I am looking at the two of them and how they could handle conflict a bit differently.  The two skills I am looking at for them come for the Third Side (n.d.)

1.       The goal is not to end or eliminate conflict but transform the way it is expressed.

-          My mother is a perfect example of this. She is a yeller and a door slammer. She always says she “feels better” when she behaves in this way, but I do not feel it is an effective form of communication, which I have shared with her J which has elicited yelling and door slamming, lol.

 

2.       You do not have to take sides in a conflict, nor do you need to remain neutral.

-          This skill applies to me more than my parents. I frequently am pitted against each parent because I am an only child and they want me to support their cause. I often say “I am Switzerland, leave me alone.”  I can take sides when needed especially if it is something I am in agreement with. This past week it was how the Green Bay Packers laid an egg on Thanksgiving night while we were there in the miserable weather.  That is something I could take a side on.

 

The Third Side. (n.d.). The third side. Retrieved from http://www.thirdside.org/

Who am I as a Communicator?

The Listening Styles Profile (Rubin, Rubin, Graham, Perse & Seibold, 2009) is the one assessment that my results did not match how the other two people responded. In fact the results from my assistant and mother matched, but again, did not match mine.  My results showed that my listening style was in Group 3: content-oriented. I do believe that when I listen to others, I am looking for details to make sure I am making an accurate decision and in my professional life I need to make sure I am listening for details to understand what might be going on in the lives of my students and families.  Like the profile stated, I do feel that when there is a lot of information coming at me, I struggle with comprehending it all. There are many times that I “zone” out when listening to a lot of information because I can get overwhelmed by hearing all the information presented at once.  I try to take notes as much as possible because of that. The results of my assistant and mother had my listening style come out as Group 4: time-oriented. I can see why my assistant’s results showed that because in a work setting I do have to be aware of my schedule and have to carefully allocate when and how long I am going to be able to listen. My mother also knows what I am like as a professional and said the same thing, I have to be time-oriented during the work day. I did like that my mother pointed out, that if she were to do this survey for my professional and personal life, that the two results would be different. She believes if she were to answer the questions solely on my personal life or even had a non-work friend complete it,  my results may have been more in line with  Group 1: people-oriented.  I agreed with her when she brought this up, my listening style is very different in my personal life than my professional life, and a lot of it has to do with time.

The final communication assessment also surprised me a bit.  In regards to the Verbal Aggressiveness Scale (Rubin, Palmgreen & Sypher, 2009) I came out in the moderate range. I am going to be honest, I was expecting to be in the significant range. I say this because I can really call people out on things when warranted. When going over the questions though, I did find myself saying, “No, I’m not that bad.” I don’t attack people’s character or try to belittle them, so I can see why I am more moderate.  My mother and assistant’s results also showed that I was in the moderate level. My mother frequently made the comment while completing the assessment, “it depends on who it is.” This is a statement I agree with. A perfect example was today. I attended an initial intake meeting for one of my student’s at an outside agency for wrap-around services. I literally walked into the evaluation room with the parent and student and the agency worker started criticizing me regarding the incident reports I provided to the agency to help them understand the aggressive and unsafe behaviors this child is presenting. The agency worker didn’t even introduce himself to me or the parent before his critique began.  The agency worker told me that he did not agree with what I was doing in my classroom and that it is no wonder I am seeing these behaviors. Three different times throughout the 50 minute meeting this person criticized what I was doing in my classroom, in front of the parent. It took all I had to remain professional during this meeting and not become argumentative or defensive. I was so upset when I left! Had I not had on my “professional hat,” I would have become verbally aggressive toward this individual.

 

 

References:

Rubin, R. B., Palmgreen, P., & Sypher, H. E. (Eds.) (2009). Communication research measures: A sourcebook. New York: Routledge.

Rubin, R. B., Rubin, A. M., Graham, E. E., Perse, E. M., & Seibold, D. R. (Eds.) (2009). Communication research measures II: A sourcebook. New York: Routledge.

 

 

 

Cultural Diversity and Communication

I find myself communicating and interacting with different groups and different cultures all the time. I work in a city school where many families are low SES and culturally diverse and all of my students have special needs. These are the three strategies I try to make sure I am using so I can communicate effectively with my families.

1.       Be mindful of who you are interacting with.

·         Is this a single mom who will view my questions /concerns as me judging her?

2.       Develop creative flexibility.

·          Working in the city has really made me flexible. I often say to new therapist, “welcome to the city.” We have to change our mentality when working with families from a city culture.

 

3.       Become other-oriented.

·         I often think to myself, what are these families experiencing? Again, most of my families are from low SES and all of them have children with special needs. I have to try to put myself in their shoes.

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)

TV Show-Week 2

For this weeks assignment I watched the new TV show "Casual" on Hulu.

I think the biggest "aha" moment that I saw from this assignment is that there is a lot of non-verbal communication going on!  I could tell so much about how characters were feeling by the look in their faces. I guess I never focused on how non-verbal communication plays such a role in communication on screen and off screen.

A Great Communicator

Communication is the key to everything in life. It can make or break a situation. While trying to think of a person who exhibits great communication skills I thought about people within my own life, people I have met and people I want to be like. I wanted to look beyond day-to-day communication and think of a great orator that has taken a passionate position on something and made people take notice.
The person that came to mind as one of the greatest communicators I have ever had the pleasure to hear and someone I want to emulate is Wayne Dyer. There are four things that I feel made Wayne Dyer one of the greatest communicators.

1. Following his heart and making an emotional connection with his audience
2. Making a room come alive
3. Humor
4. Using his own experience

I personally feel that following your heart and making the audience, however big or small, feel what you are feeling is the best way to effectively communicate, especially when it's something you are passionate about. When people sense you are passionate about something, they take notice. The other three characteristics are also great attributes of an effective communicator. When I have given presentations I always make sure I add humor, use my own experiences and make sure my I am keeping my audiences attention.

I am personally quite sad that the great Wayne Dyer is no longer with us, but feel he will always be remembered for his all of the wonderful things he contributed to this world.

Professional Hopes and Goals

One hope that I have for working with diverse families and backgrounds is that  I will continue to advocate for diverse families to gain the resources and support that they need.

One goal I would like to set for the early childhood field is that there be continued professional development in regards to diversity. The teacher education preparation programs at a collegial level recognize this need, but the field outside of college needs to continue to see the need for professional development for the already hired staff.

Thank you to my peers within this course for the positive feedback in our discussions and blogs. Sometimes it is nice (and needed) to hear positive things from other professionals.

Welcoming Families from Around the World

I actually do not have to make up a family for this exercise. I am currently experiencing a family for a “new” country. Last June (2014) I was made aware that starting in July I would be having a little girl from Haiti in my class. The only thing I really knew about Haiti was that it is a tropical island and there was a hurricane there are few years back. I could picture in my head what a “typical” Haitian looked like as well. At the initial meeting with the family I asked about their native language. I learned that this family spoke Haitian Creole. My first thought was “oh no, how am I going to communicate with this family.” There was a family friend along at the meeting that spoke English and he said that he would be my “contact” person (after a month his phone was out of service and I never heard back from him). After the initial meeting I did some research on Haitian Creole, just to see what more familiar language was closest to it and that is French. I was thinking if worse comes to worse, I can always try to write a note home in French (thank you google translator!)

 Once the little girl started in my classroom, in July, I realized she was speaking some Haitian Creole, so I looked up simple phrases like "hello", "goodbye," and "thank you", just so the little girl would not feel completely out of place. I also started the search for a Haitian Creole interpreter in the event one was needed (as previously mentioned that took forever to get approval for). Since I was not immediately successful with obtaining an interpreter I had to think outside the box. I had a friend in high school that moved to Haiti with his family for a few years and I got in contact with him to see if his parents would be willing to help me if needed. I learned that they are no longer living in the area, so that resource was not going to work.

I was pretty much stuck at this point (September) and very frustrated because I knew nothing about this little girl or her family, and not because I didn’t want to learn about them. This feeling went on for months and in December things finally started to click. For the last few months I have learned so much about this girl and her family and their "story." This little girl was just diagnosed with Autism through my preschool program and the social worker for our program and I (and the interpreter) are going to be sitting down with mom in two weeks to talk about what is next for this family. It is very apparent through our conversations that she needs help with this little girl and in life. It is my goal to get this family as much help as they need and provide them with resources so that when this child goes to kindergarten in the fall everything will be set up as best as possible.

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice and Opression

Thinking over this blog assignment, I realized that I had blocked out a bias/prejudice situation that I dealt with all of last year. I honestly have not thought of this situation before this week.

My teacher assistant from last year was new to education. She had never worked in the field prior to being hired as my preschool teacher assistant. She started with me in August and I quickly learned about her beliefs. Her beliefs did not match mine, but I was hoping that would not matter or affect our working relationship. By September, I knew that it was going to be a long year. My assistant was starting to make comments about the children we work with and those comments were offensive. She blamed parents for a child’s disability. She frequently made her opinions known about government assistance, and many of my families receive government assistance. She also frequently remarked about some of my families needing to learn English. I am not going to go into all the details of her comments, but I think you can get a good picture of what she was like.

I had meetings with her going over protocol of our place of employment as well as my views and beliefs about the students and families in this classroom. She did not agree with anything I said and made that very clear. I started to document her behaviors and what she said, because she was no longer keeping her thoughts and opinions to herself in my classroom, she was taking them out to the whole school. I was getting very concerned about this. By December, I realized I could not be the change agent I was hoping I could be, so I went to my supervisors. Unfortunately they were not very helpful. From December to the end of the year they did not step foot in my classroom to discuss my concerns or even make my assistant aware of my concerns.

I was so offended by her comments and beliefs not only personally but professionally. Our classroom was in an urban setting and I think we had three “white” students. This was clearly not the classroom for her. I just hoped she was smart enough not to make any comments in front of parents, which she was.

The one good thing is that she was moved to a rural school for this school year. I do hear that she is still up to her old tricks, but I am happy she is no longer in my classroom voicing her opinions.

Practicing Awareness of Microagression

While listening to this week's video regarding microagression I began to think about a situation this past fall that I now would consider a form of microagression. One of the student's that I work with is from Haiti and speaks Hatian-Creole. We have had many issues communicating with this family going back to his past July. I had tried to discuss the language barrier issue with my supervisors, but with no success. Most of the resistance was because it would cost $45 an hour to use an interpreter. Side note- we had success in December meeting with the mother and interpreter and have two more meetings set up :)



        October rolls around and student A is starting to exhibit very unusual behaviors; sudden arm spasms, going cross-eyed, and mouth chewing. I am not a medical doctor, but those symptoms can be related to seizure activity. I observed these behaviors for two days and then went to the school nurse who came to observe. She saw the same unusual behaviors and told me that she recommended calling an ambulance because she thought this child was having seizures. I have to be honest, I did not do that because I had no way of communicating to the mother that her daughter was going to the hospital. I emailed my supervisor immediately to discuss the situation. In essence the response was, if she is not falling to the ground, don’t call because we can’t communicate. I was not happy with this response, but did as I was told. I sent a letter home to mother in French ( that was the closest to Hatian-Creole that Google translate could get me) and English about the unusual behaviors we were seeing, hoping mother would take her daughter to the doctor. All of October went by with no response back from mother and the unusual behaviors were still occurring. I again brought this to my supervisor’s attention with no answer about what I should be doing next. I just hoped nothing serious happened.

       In November our preschool program had an in-service about dual language and the topic of family culture came up. My student was an example. The associate supervisor out loud addressed the medical issue I thought my student was having and said that it is possible that because of the family’s culture, they may see this medical issue as voodoo. It took all I had not to get up and leave the in-service. How insensitive and inappropriate to say! It still makes my blood boil as I write this.


I feel that this situation could be viewed as a microinsult because the associate supervisor was questioning the families background/heritage.  I cannot tell you how upset I was on this in-service day, and how upset I am to this day that it took from July- December to actually be able to communicate with this mother. There should not be hoops to jump through at any time when it comes to communicating with parents.

Perspectives on Diversity and Culture

For this assignment I tried to really think about who to ask to define culture and diversity. I did not want anyone to be exactly like me.  I chose my assistant who is a recent college graduate,  the preschool interpreter I work with who is from Puerto Rico, and my mother who has recently retired after 36 years in education.



Assistant:
Family culture is where people come from and their beliefs that they have.

Diversity is when a whole bunch of differences come together in a positive way.

Preschool Interpreter:
To me, diversity and even culture means getting to know, understand, and respect other people's way of life. Their history, food, way of dressing, embracing the way of interacting with their friends and family and also their native language. Even if it's your native language. Since Spanish is spoken in several countries, but that also means knowing or expanding yourself to use those nuances instead of criticizing it or mocking because it is not said the way your used to hearing it. For me I have to apply it both of my native languages, because of being born in the states and growing up surrounded by my family from Puerto Rico.

Mother:
Culture is a small group of individuals who share similar beliefs.

Diversity is when you look at a community of people and recognize that within that community there are various cultures reflected in that community.




The aspects of diversity and culture that have been included in the three definitions are recognizing that people have their own beliefs and history. Respect is another aspect that was addressed in the definitions.

I cannot really identify any aspects of diversity and culture that have been omitted in the definitions.  It appears to me that the three people I have asked all have a common idea of what culture and diversity means.

What I did notice is that everyone brings their own backgrounds into a definition. No one made a standard dictionary definition of diversity and culture. It shows that even within two noted ideas, each individual makes the definition their own.

My Family Culture

The three items that I would take with me to a different country are:

A football- My family is a huge football fan so I would take a football to the new country and hopefully try to explain the sport.

A picture of my cats- My family is a big supporter of the SPCA and of cats as pets. I would be able to discuss the importance of rescuing animals and how cats are awesome.

A seashell- My family loves to travel, especially to beaches. I would take the seashell to represent traveling and something that comes from the beach.

If I had to choose one item to keep I would choose my cats because even just looking at them would bring me joy.