Thank you!!!!

To all my colleagues in EDUC 6165-1 with Dr. Parrish,

Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise with me over the last eight weeks. I have learned so much. I value your thoughts, opinions,  perspectives and look forward to continuing my journey with those who are specializing in Teaching and Diversity in Early Childhood Education. If you are going on to other specializations I wish you the best in your future endeavors.  I welcome everyone to continue following my blog and share any new information that we can use to guide and help children grow and develop to be successful  in life. 

Anita

                                       

 

Adjourning

The last stage that we encounter when we are building teams is the adjourning phase. The adjourning stage is the time when we have finished up any task that we have been working on or our time with a group has finished, and it’s time for us to move on(O'Hair, Wiemann,   Mullin, & Teven, 2015).

The hardest group that had trouble adjourning from is my military units during Permanent Change of Station moves (PCS). You build up incredible friendships and relations, but you know that they will come to an end because you will have to go to another military unit at some point. You may have deployed to war with people and developed close bonds that can never be replaced or replicated. A PCS move is hard and challenging, but now with social media, you can keep in touch with the friends that you have made and know what they are doing every day.“Adjourning” from military teams is something I had to do every three or four years over a twenty-six year period. You work with people from a wide diversity of cultures and learn how to respect, value and develop trust to form lasting relationships

The rituals that usually happen when I  PCS from a unit is that they have an awards ceremony where they recognize all the accomplishments I have made at the unit.  The particular section of the unit ( i.e. food service section} may throw a farewell lunch or dinner on your behalf. In the adjourning phase this is sometimes called a "termination ritual"(O'Hair, Wiemann,   Mullin, & Teven, 2015). Sometimes, they will give you a gift or plaque which will remind you about particular section or unit.

The adjourning is an important stage because it is important to achieve closure for the group on a positive note.It's a time when we may feel a sense of loss and motivation may decline because we are coming to an end work of working with a  team that we may have become accustomed to working with over time. I felt this every time that I moved, and never experience a negative departure from a military unit. One of our Army motto's was "One Team, One Fight".

Over the course of my Master's program I have not personally met any of my classmates face to face but feel we are connected because of our professional interests. I have learned so much and I plan on continuing to posts items to my blog and invite my classmates to still follow me if they choose.  

Reference:

O'Hair, D., Wiemann, M., Mullin, D. I., & Teven, J.  (2015). Real communication (3rd. ed). New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.

Conflict Resolution

Last year, I had a disagreement with a fellow teacher from another preschool classroom over something that she did which disrupted my class. We have outside time every morning for one hour, and each preschool classroom goes outside one class at a time.  The teacher from the other classroom, when she was outside, would sometimes open the door and yell into the classroom if she needed some assistance. We could see and hear if she opened up the door and we preferred to come to the door to see what she needed instead of her yelling. What made me upset was that the previous year the same teacher was upset that someone was yelling into her room and asked them not to do it anymore, but she was doing the exact thing. It seems rather small, but small disputes turned into a big argument. We kept interrupting each other as we were speaking and didn't hear what the other was trying to say.


The situation escalated, and we had to go inside another room so that the children would not see us arguing. One of the administrators who is not our immediate supervisor tried to mediate the situation but was unsuccessful because we would not let each other get our points across without interrupting.  She let us know that she would let our immediate supervisor know about the situation.

Later that day a meeting was set up with our immediate supervisor and us. We had a chance to talk about the incident without us interrupting each other with our supervisor and the administrator  who was present during the argument. The whole situation resulted from us not communicating with each other and letting the other know if there were some things that we disliked.

 We both look back on it now and agree that communication makes a difference. The other preschool teacher didn't know that we didn't like yelling into the classroom. We also agree that in situations that get out of hand we may need to walk away, cool down and then talk respectively to each other about the issue. We haven't had any problems since that incident.

  
Two strategies to manage or resolve conflicts more productively.

 Compromise: Do not look  at situation as a competition, where one has to win and one has to lose. Work toward a solution where both parties can have some of their needs met.

Listen without interrupting; ask  questions  if needed to assure a clear understanding of the issue. Make sure that you focus on the issue and not your position about the issue.

Anita

References:

O'Hair, D., Wiemann, M., Mullin, D. I., & Teven, J.  (2015). Real communication (3rd. ed). New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.