Who Am I as a Communicator?

When you are communicating with someone, try to be a very effective communicator because you never know how someone is watching your communication skills and reactions.

This week in Communicating and Collaborating in the Early Childhood Field course, we were able to examine our own communication and listening styles, dispositions, and skills, as well as getting someone else to evaluate you. It was amazing to see how a family member and a colleague perceived my communication skills mostly the same as I did myself.

The insights about communications I gained this week is to never take communication for granted, and how not to make assumptions and perceptions about a person by their outer appearance. As an educator, it is very important to reach out to our children and their families we serve with effective communication skills. We need to make an effort to build a friendly network, especially  to the ones that we perceive as being "different" from us. When we exercise good communication skills, we will develop the abilities to communicate in a better constructive way.

Communication and Culture:

In an increasingly diverse economy, I come in contact with cultural diversity by interacting with colleagues in the school, my neighborhood, and my workplace. The United States is known as the melting pot nation, a place for people of different backgrounds to come together and ultimately grow together. Unfortunately, from language to food to religious practice, cultural traditions are still around us. I read in one of my daily bread books about hospitality:

Whether we inhabit a home, a college dorm, a prison cell, or a military barracks, we can welcome others as a way of showing our love for them and for Christ. Hospitality is making room for people in need. –David McCasland

When involved in a diverse community, I have a tendency to communicate differently with people from different groups and cultures other than my own. One of the most culturally unresponsiveness situations I find myself in is communicating effectively with my children and their families who speak another language; mostly in my area- Spanish. I have learned some beginner’s Spanish words, but I still can’t speak it well enough to communicate effectively. I find myself using a lot of hand gestures, using different objects to identify what I’m talking about, or if the communication is still not effective, I resort to a translator, which makes me feel terrible because I wasn’t able to supply the needs of the children and their parents.

As an early childhood professional, in order to communicate more effectively with my children and their families there are three strategies I will use. Among these are:

1. Understanding and acknowledging that we are from different cultures and backgrounds.
2. Become other-oriented by developing appropriate knowledge and understanding of the Hispanic culture and how they communicate.
3. Have a translator on standby when conducting parent conferences, special activities, or to translate newsletters, or any other important information.

* Here is a quote I would like to share by Bernard Baruch:

“We don’t all come over on the same boat, but we’re all in the same boat”

Communication Skills: Language, Nonverbal, Listening

Television Episode:

The television program I watched was an episode of “Martin” titled, “You’ve Got a Friend”. As I watched this episode on mute, I saw a variety of different nonverbal expressions and body languages that showed hand gestures, smiling, hugging, disagreement, eye contact, confusion, and hostility. The character’s relationships seemed to be an off-and-on togetherness.

After I watched the episode with the sound on, I realized the true meaning of the various expressions, and body gestures. It was exciting to see how my assumptions of their nonverbal behaviors of what were actually going on was so different from hearing the verbal communications.

I believe my assumptions would have been more correct if I had watched a show I knew well. But from watching this episode, I have learned that communication is not always straightforward. You can make the wrong assumptions based on messages communicated through body language and facial expressions.

This assignment was also great because I was able to put myself in a deaf person’s position, and see how difficult it is to read lips, and understand what a person is saying verbally.
　

Competent Communication

The person I chose that demonstrates competent communication would be my Pre-K Administrator. I chose him because when I need help or advice about something concerning my students and parents, I can go to him without being afraid or intimidated. He demonstrates effective communication skills and partnership with his employees by showing us trust and a mutual understanding that respects us professionally and as human beings. Throughout the years, we have learned that being able to communicate effectively with our parents will nurture the growth and learning of the individual child by sharing information, insights and concerns. It is a necessity and not an extra to exhibit good communication skills to our parents as well as their children.

I would definitely like to model my communication behaviors after my Administrator because our staff loves him, and we have a better working atmosphere among us.