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.