Reflecting on Communication in the Early Childhood Field

To Dr. Darragh and my colleagues in the course of Communicating and Collaborating in the Early Childhood Field:

I would like to thank each one of you for all the information, insights, and support we shared throughout this course. I have gained more knowledge and understanding about effective communication skills that can be used in both my professionally life in the early childhood field, as well as personally. Also, I have learned how to build great teamwork and collaboration in various situations that will be beneficial to help foster the well-being of young children and their families that I serve.

As we get ready to enter into our specialization courses, I wish you the best of luck as you continue to strive to reach your goals and visions in the early childhood field. Through my blog, I would like for us to continue to stay in touch, encourage, and support each other as we continue on this journey. Once again, thanks for all you have done to contribute to my knowledge and understanding in the Early Childhood Field.

Team Building and Collaboration, Part 1

This week in “Team Building and Collaboration”, we learned about the five stages of team development:  forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. These stages are an importance for the team to grow where they will be functioning together effectively and achieve success.

For this blog assignment, I will focus on the “adjourning” phase when the team has completed a project and is getting ready to leave each other. I believe all groups are hard to leave when you have established a good team that has worked effectively together. The group I participated in was our group of pre-k team teachers last year. Some of us have been together 16+ years and have established a close bond. Due to the budget cuts for pre-k, our group was split up because some of the pre-k teachers couldn’t afford to take a cut in pay, which forced them to resign from pre-k and move up to other grades or retire. Breaking up a team can be very stressful for all involved. At the end of last school year, during our post planning, the team had their last luncheon together where we shared tears and many memories together as we are getting ready to depart and go our separate ways in the early childhood field.

I anticipate that I will experience sadness as well as joy when I adjourn from the group of colleagues that were formed while working on my master’s degree. I will experience sadness because some of us have been together from the first course, and I hope we will continue to keep in touch as we go on our journey in the early childhood field. We have shared many stories, ideas, and insights that created closeness even thought we don’t know each other personally. The joy I will experience will be because obtaining my master’s degree will be another stepping stone I have accomplished in my careerJ.

I think adjourning is an essential stage of teamwork because the group will get a chance to analyze all the ups and downs they have shared in that team, and use this information in other groups in the future to help build effective teamwork.

Nonviolent Communication and Conflict Management

For this week's blog, our assignment was to think about any disagreements, or conflicts we have experienced and share the strategies we learned that might be helpful and effective in managing and resolving conflict more productively.

I can recall an disagreement that happened my at my job concerning our Christmas pre-k party. It was time for us to have our Christmas parties, and we were making preparations to send home newsletters to the parents about what to expect concerning the parties. Some of our teachers wanted the parents to attend and some didn't. We have always had parents attend our Christmas parties, but this year some teachers had a change of mind due to us having an early release day. I was unaware of this change until a parent asked me why we wasn't having a Christmas party for the pre-k children.

Since pre-k is an important time in a child's life, I feel like parents should have every opportunity to be involved in their child's learning experience and extra curriculum activities, so I wasn't in agreement with the other co-workers about not having parent to attend the Christmas parties. Therefore, in order for me to approach the other teachers about this conflict, I had to come up with a strategy and quick.

In the text, "Real Communications", when we engage in conflict by debating the issue at hand, we exchange more ideas, reach better decisions, and foster stronger, healthier relationships (O'Hair & Weimann, 2009, p. 214). The strategy we always use is cooperative strategy, that way we can produce a solution that will benefit everyone. Also, the 3Rs are used in order to be an effective communicator in resolving the conflicts. We have to be mindful to be respectful, reciprocal, and responsive to each other differences through communication.

As educators, we have learned how to be more effective communicators as it relates to conflict resolutions by calling team meetings to discuss certain issues we may have concerns about. This has allowed our pre-k program and staff to be successful and one big happy "family".

Reference:
O'Hair, D., & Weimann, M. (2009). Real communication. New York:  Bedford/St. Martin's.