Thank you

As we near the end of this class I would like to say thank you to my colleagues. Thank you for your insights, encouragement and support through your comments. I have enjoyed reading your posts and comments, I have learned a lot from all of you. I wish you all the best and hope to see you in other classes.

Groups

It is usually hardest for me to leave social groups. I feel most connected to the individuals in these groups and knowing that we will not be meeting or seeing each other regularly usually makes me sad. In these groups we have already gone through the forming, storming, norming and performing stage. Knowing that we will not be doing things together anymore makes adjourning hard. The hardest group for me to leave were my friends in college. We were all international students and a great support for each other. In time, we came to realize that we had a lot in common even though we were from different countries. The similarities in our cultures were amazing. We often ate together and had discussions about several issues that concerned us. We tried to help each other as best we could in every aspect of our lives. Of course there were disagreements sometimes but we always worked them out. We had a closing ritual of sorts after our graduation. Our friends and family all gathered together and some of them prayed for us, we celebrated completing four years of college with speeches and a cake. Afterwards we all went out to a restaurant and had a meal which served as a celebratory and farewell dinner. I also gave everyone in the group a personalized letter of appreciation which I had written to them. I imagine I will probably adjourn from this group by thanking individuals for their contributions. Everyone has helped to make this experience a more enriching one with their contributions and advice. Adjourning is important because it helps to bring closure and sometimes helps you to look to the future and the next thing instead of living in the past. Adjourning also gives you a chance to look at your successes and failures as a group and possibly how you can improve next time (O'- Hair & Wiemann, 2012).



Reference:

O'- Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2012). Real communication. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.

Conflict Resolution

I recently had a disagreement with my boss about the way I discipline some of my students. He thinks that I can be a little harder on them. Two strategies that I have learned to help me manage disagreements are to:

listen to what the other party says and give feedback telling them what I heard. This way I can ascertain if I understood the message the way they meant it.

to take the win win approach (Conflict Resolution Network, n.d.) in which sometimes both parties can have their needs met satisfactorily without having to necessarily compromise on anything. In this case I asked my boss if he could come in and teach my class for a day so I can see exactly what he would like me to do in certain situations. This way I can implement some of his strategies and we can talk over things that I might not feel comfortable employing in my class.


Reference:

Conflict Resolution Network. (n.d.). CR kit. Retrieved from http://www.crnhq.org/pages.php?pID=12#skill_3

Communication Style

The two persons I chose to evaluate me were my friend and my husband. We all had similar scores for communication anxiety and listening skills. My husband’s score placed me in the moderate category for verbal aggressiveness, which was the same category that I placed myself in. However my friend’s score placed me in the significantly verbally aggressive category by one point. I was surprised that she perceived me in this way. I do not consider myself to be so. I always try to consider others and not hurt their feelings as much as possible. If anything I try to attack ideas and not the individual who puts forth the idea. I suppose my friend either perceives me differently than I perceive myself or perhaps she made a mistake when she was filling out the evaluation. Whatever the case, I need to ensure that I am not verbally aggressive in my dealings with others. It can be damaging to any relationship, and especially to any bonds that I may have formed with my students. I learned that communication is truly a two-way street. It is not only about what you put out there or what you say but it also involves how others perceive your actions and words.

Communicating With Different Groups

I communicate differently with different colleagues at work. I work in Japan so I work with a Japanese staff as well as Americans. I also work with a friend who I have known since college. When I am communicating with my friend I tend to use a lot of high level abstract language; facial expressions; and sometimes Twi words or pidgin words from her language as she is from Ghana. I also speak much faster and others have told me that my accent changes. When I communicate with the American staff my speech is slower; I make more eye contact and I use mostly low level abstract language. In communicating with the Japanese staff I speak slowly, use a lot of gestures to compensate for my lack in the spoken language, I only know a few Japanese phrases. I also bow and listen more actively.

Three strategies that will help me communicate more effectively are to:

learn Japanese, at least learn some key phrases.

ensure that I listen attentively to whoever is speaking to me.

realize that in the Japanese culture it is not common to maintain eye contact so I should feel bad if the Japanese staff that I work with do not look me in the eye when we are communicating.

Nonverbal Communication

The plot of the show I watched seemed to have some element of romance and took place during some sort of war . The main characters seemed to be boyfriend and girlfriend or married. They looked like they were happy with each other as they both were smiling at different points. They seemed to be close as both of them were jumping up and down on a bed like children and laughing. Both characters kept smiling at, standing close to and touching each other. Later on they seemed to be having a serious conversation in which the woman got agitated and the man seemed to comfort her. When I turned on the sound I realized that most of my assumptions were correct. However, although the couple were married they were not as happy as they seemed. In fact they were trying to get back to the way things used to be in their marriage. If I was watching a show I knew well I think my assumptions would have been correct as I would be better able to read their facial expressions and other nonverbal expressions.

This experience taught me that communication can occur through nonverbal behaviors. However,when the verbal aspect is added it brings more clarity to the situation as nonverbal behaviors can sometimes be misinterpreted. It is important to pay attention to verbal and nonverbal behaviors in students and their families and we need to be mindful of how our nonverbal behaviors may be interpreted.

Competent Communication

I have a friend who exhibits competent communication at her job. When communicating her face is very expressive and she enunciates her words. She is also a very good listener. I would like to model some of her communication behaviors. Sometimes when I get very excited I gesticulate but I don’t say my words clearly, this hampers communication.