Exploring Roles in the ECE Community: Local and State Levels EDU 6990

• At least three local or state organizations or communities of practice that appealed to you, and explain why you chose them

Three organizations that appeal to me from my area are: The North Carolina Early Childhood Association (NCECA), The North Carolina Association of Educators (NCAE) and PENC  Professional Educators of North Carolina. I choose NCECA because they are an organization that specializes in early childhood education. They strive to improve on quality childcare. They also are committed to providing high quality early childhood education to all children in the state of North Carolina. They also advocate for for quality work environments for early childhood educators. I chose the PENC because they advocate on promoting quality education for all children as well as aid in the importance of hiring high quality educators to educate our children. It is a great opportunity for you to get your voice heard to legislators and other government officials. The other organization that grasped my interest was the NCAE. This organization was first introduced to me when I was in college. It offers a lot of great benefits to educators and those striving to be educators. I value them because they value professionalism, equal access, and diversity.They also want to ensure that all children in North Carolina are receiving a quality education.

Resources

http://smartstart-fc.org/north-carolina-early-childhood-association-nceca/

http://www.ncae.org/who-we-are/values-mission-and-vision/

http://www.pencweb.org/history

Job opportunities (currently available or not) that interest youSkills and experience that you would need to competently fulfill each of these roles:

http://agency.governmentjobs.com/northcarolina/default.cfm?

Education Program Director

This job entitles you to provide services to instituies of higher education in North carolina that offer licensure programs for peopel seeking to be educators.In order to do this job I must have great communication skills, interpersonal skills, and great collaborative work skills. I woudl also needs a Masters Degree within the field of education as well has a total of four years of working in the public school. This means I need 2 more years of working in the classroom.

Another Job opportunity I can across was a Directors position of a Bright Horizons Childcare Program in Raleigh North Carolina. https://sjobs.brassring.com/tgwebhost/jobdetails.aspx?partnerid=25595&siteid=5216&jobid=394235.  The skills that I would need for this job are great communication skills, collaborative skills, strong leadership skills, customer service skills and computer skills and organizational skills. To continue to strive for this position I would need 3-5 years of management/leadership experience. the rest of the requirements I already have.

Word Of Thanks (comm&collab)

I would like to take the time out and thank everyone for sharing their posts with me throughout this class. I would like to thank everyone for responding to my post as well as sharing personal experiences with me. They have helped me throughout this course and at the same time learn about myself personally and as a Teacher. Again thank you all for the support throughout this course!! I would love to stay in contact with everyone below you will find my email address to where you can contact me. I wish everyone the Best!!

Contact Info:

chawandaharris@gmail.com
littlierookie24@yahoo.com
chawanda.harris@waldenu.edu

Adjourning

The group I found hardest to leave out of the groups I have discussed this week had to have been the group of my basketball team. In this group I was one of the starters on the team. I did not hole a big leadership position like team captain. I think this group was so hard to leave because I had developed a lot of friendships; I had been playing with some of my other teammates since recreational league. I considered my basketball team to be a high performing group because on a team everyone has a role that they play on the court especially when it comes to running plays. Also being a part of this team made you work with people of different cultures and diversities. You had to learn to develop relationships with people that you may not normally interact with on a daily bases. Being a part of this group consists of all of the steps needs to build a successful team which are forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. As a team we all had our roles, most respected each other, along with having the support of our coaches (Fleming&Monda-Amava, 2001). The only thing that I wished would have been established was more respectable relationships between myself and some of the players on the team. I think if those teammates would have gotten to know me outside of just practice our relationships would have been different.

When I think about my colleagues that I have met so far here at Walden University I feel as If our relationships could possibly have been even stronger if we would have met face to face. Anyone can sound good on paper, but it is something about meeting face to face that gives you that since of clarity and trust. I do hope that some of my classmates as I will stay in touch beyond this program. I have made some connections with people that right here in my home state of North Carolina. It has made nice to be able to relate with someone that is coming from the same state, but a different area. I feel that there has been a great deal of respect between each student as we have done discussions and blog post. A lot of people including myself have shared a lot of experiences that are personally, which have allowed us to open up to others and develop professional relationships. I feel that I have grown close to a lot of my colleagues especially the ones that have been in all of my classes since we have started the program.

The adjourning stage is such an important stage because it allows for self reflection. It allows you to see what went well and what things you’re yourself and the team could have approved on. It gives you the opportunity to work with others and see how their mind and thought process works. It gives you the chance to give praise to someone else for their accomplishments. It allows you to understand what it is to collaborate. It allows you to make personal and professional connections with others.

Resources

Fleming, J.L., & Monda-Amaya, L.E. (2001).  Process variables critical for learning team effectiveness.  Remedial and Special Education, 22(3), 158.

Conflict Within My Work Area

  Conflict is something that we face almost everyday in life, rather it's at work or at home. The key to conflict is being able to resolve it in a positive manor. I believe the text, and articles from this week have aloud me to better handle my communication in resolving conflict with someone in a positive manner. 
One recent conflict that I have experienced has been through my job with a parent. We have had a disagreement on the way of handling her child's misbehavior in the classroom. She feels as if her child is a perfect angle and never does anything wrong. I have explained to her the type of behaviors that he is displaying in the classroom such as, putting his hands on me and my TA, hitting other students, throwing chairs, falling out in the halls, sliding up and down the hallway etc...  Before things had escalated I began trying several different strategies with him such as: sitting him in his own area on the carpet, giving him something to hold while on the carpet, if and then charts, rewards system etc. This is all things that I had suggested to to the parent and used in the classroom, but it seemed not to be working. After that I asked for some assistance from the behavior therapist and this again brought up and issue with the parent, but with further discussion Both the parent and I had agreed for the school therapist to come in and observe just so that she could gain so more understanding of what I was trying to tell her.  Still the parent feels that everything that I was telling her was a lie. It got to the point where an emergency meeting was called and I literally had to get written documentation from other teachers that had assisted me with this student to present to the parent to show that hey everything that I am telling you is the truth. Once in the meeting the therapist Pretty much confirmed everything that I had been telling to the parent from the beginning to be true. From there I began to receive  help in the classroom to better handle this child behavior, but at the need of everything the parent and I relationship is not good. It's like she was offended because I was trying to get help for her child. At the present time the relationship between the parent and I is copacetic  and since the meeting there hasn't been anymore drama with the parent. The relationship between the child and I has grown stronger as well.

To help me continue to make this a positive relationship some of the strategies that have helped me are taking that of the Third Side. This will allow me to sit back and actually listen to everything the parent is trying to say, empathize and try to understand where she is coming from before I give any type of response. Also from the beginning of this situation I should have taken into account more of the three R's i would have been more considered and put my own feeling and judgments to the side so that I Would have been able to listening and empathise with the parent more so things would not have escalated as they did. Currently I think  using the WIn WIn approach will be a great way for both the parent and I to share ideas and communicate better with each other.
Has anyone experienced a situation similar to this if so what strategies would you suggest to help resolve this situation? 

Communication Evaluation of Me

When completing the evaluation test I thought it was very interesting that among everyone who evaluated me including myself, that there were a lot of similarities. I asked my teacher assistant and my boyfriend to evaluate me.  I had them each to take all three test because I was curious to see how others viewed my communication skills in comparison with my self.

When it came to the listening styles profile all three sores from myself, TA, and boyfriend it all ended up being in group one. Group one says that I am empathetic and concerned with the emotions of others. This listening style helps build strong relationships, but it can interfere with proper judgement because I tend to be very trusting of others. I agree with this part of the way I am very empathetic and concerned with the emotions of others when I talk to them because I would not want to say anything that would offend them or their character. I do believe that this helps me to build positive relationships, however I'm not quite sure if it interferes with my judgement. I feel as if though I will trust you until you give me a reason not to trust you.

After reviewing the scores for Verbal Aggressiveness I found this to be the most interesting of all of my results.  When I looked at the scores from myself and my boyfriend it indicated that I was at a score of moderate. Which means I maintain a good balance between respect and consideration for others viewpoints and the ability to argue fairly by attacking the facts of a position rather than the person holding the position. I believe that this is true about my self because I feel that you should not directly attack person personally for their viewpoint, but instead put facts with facts to kind of show the person how both their an your viewpoint could be similar and different by presenting facts. What I found interesting was that in the evaluation that my TA did because her score came back putting me under significant. Significant says that with little provocation, you might cross the line from "argumentative" which attacks a person's position or statements, and verbal aggression, which involves personal attacks and can be hurtful to the listener. I do not agree with this statement, but I wonder if with certain situations that have occurred at work if I become aggressive before thinking it all the way through. It is very interesting to see a result like this because it makes me step back and look at myself and how I handle certain situations. It could also be because we work in the same environment all day long she may be more receptive to things than I am not which may indicate that I may be more aggressive. This is a great eye opener for me.

The last set of scores were interesting to me as well. The results of  Communication Anxiety from both my TA and my boyfriend came out to Moderate. Moderate indicates that I feel somewhat concerned about a number of communication contexts, but probably not all.  It says that mid-point level of communication anxiety is what we call "situational." When I evaluated myself I had a score of mild which states that I feel a bit uneasy in some communication situations and somewhat more confident in others contexts. Communication does not seem to be something that you worry a great deal about. In this instance I would have to say I agree more with the evaluation of my boyfriend and TA I do worry about some of my communication skills. I also feel that it depends on the type of situation I'm in when communicating. I may respond differently to different situations.

This week the overall activities that we have been doing with communication show me that there are some areas of communications that I need to improve on myself. Although it does not show when when I have to talk to large group of people or a small group of people I do become very anxious and nervous when communicating in certain situations. I have also learned that at I sometimes let my emotions get into the way of me listening to others. I have learned that I have to need to be come confident in what I am going to say when I say it. I have also learned that I communication better when I am talking in one on one situations. It is hard to communicate with a large group of people because you do not know how others are going to criticize you.  Nonetheless the information I have gathered this week has helped me to learn a lot about myself and it has shown me the areas that i need to work on in order to become a more effective communicator.

Diverse Communication

• Do you find yourself communicating differently with people from different groups and cultures
• If yes, in what ways do you communicate 

 
 
 When Communicating with other I have found myself to communicate with people differently.  When Talking with my own culture/race I use a lot of slang, but when working with other families I'm relaxed, but I speak in a professional manner. In the area that I teach in there is a very heavy Hispanic population. Although I communicate with them and talk to them just like I do my African American and Caucasian families, I do at times find myself a lot of the times trying to figure out what they are saying. This happens with my Hispanic students as well sometimes. I know when I am communicating with my families I use a lot of non verbal communication and alto of visuals epically when I'm not able to have one of my coworkers to come in and help translate for me. When I'm talking with both my students and families I still show them that I care and am interested in what it they are trying to communicate to me. I find my self talking slower to them as well just to see if with the little English that they know they can still kind of get an idea of what I'm saying to them as well. I know some Spanish, but not enough to carry out a long conversation. Whenever I do have a coworker come help me I always make sure that the family is comfortable with them doing that because I would never want it to seem like I do care or that I'm not trying to communicate with them at all. The whole time that I am talking to them I'm making eye contact with them and not just with the person that is translating. I still want my Hispanic families to feel comfortable with talking to me. Since I have a very welcoming attitude and classroom I have developed a lot of trusting and respectful relationships with not just my Hispanic families, but all of my families.

In Order to better the communication with a diverse group of children and families some strategies that I could use would be to  withhold judgment of others, learn about their cultures represented in the classroom to better communicate and be accepting (Gonzalez-Mena, 2010). I need to make sure that I am putting away my own biases and beliefs. Also when meeting new people I need to go into the situation with an Open mind and be a more informative listener.


Resources 

Gonzalez-Mena, J. (2010). Looking at Nonverbal   Communication Across Cultures. In 50 Strategies for Communicating and   Working With Diverse Families (pp. 80-81). Upper Saddle River, NJ:   Pearson Education, Inc.

Television Observation

For the assignment this week I chose to watch a show that I have never seen before. Being that I do not have a recording device I went onto netflix's and watched How I met your mother, season 8, episode 1: Farhampton.

The first time I watched the show I watched it without sound. When the show came on it kind of introduced everyone to a place called Farhampton. It came on with a couple which looked as if they were about to be married. Between the two of them there was a lot of verbal and non verbal communication between them. Their facial expressions showed that they were both happy and nervous. Throughout the show it showed about 2 other couples, who seemed to be couples and one single girl. One family had just had a baby everyone when looking at the baby showed facial expressions of feeling happy and excited and careful. The show seemed as if it were showing a group of couples that are friends. When they interacted with each through body language and facial expressions it seemed as if though everyone was happy and doing normal friends things like cracking jokes on them. Through out the show I observed a lot of the couples arguing it seems as if they girls were trying to get their point across but the body language of the guys said that they really did not want to hear it. During these conversation there was a look on their faces of disappointment, discouragement,sadness. You could tell that each person was concerned about other situations that they had been going through. Throughout the show I observed a lot of serious conversations where through throwing up of hands, raising eyebrows, dropping of heads and then the other looking as if they were trying to saw through notes left on the bed by one couple that they he was sorry. The show ended with with seemed to be happiness and comforting. It showed one couple with their baby smiling back at them while they were smiling and holding each other.

Show with sound \
Once I watched the show with the sound on I found some of my observations to be true. The show started with a couple about to be married, but the two have cold feet about going through with the whole thing. There were a lot of time where the facial expressions did show that they really weren't listening to what the other person was saying. There were a lot of situations where the characters were arguing trying to figure out how to break bad news to someone else. The episode also showed how you can be having a conversation with someone and the others not really be listening. The show was very commercial. It presented itself with a lot of different situations between the couples friends and how they are moving forward in life.

After watching this video it was amazing to see how much people use non verbal communication to convey their messages, whether its through body language, facial expressions and hand motions. I think most of the assumptions I had made about the video before hearing the sounds were right. It was like a lot of people in a new area beginning at new points in their lives. I think it is amazing how much people in general communicate with non-verbal skills. I thought that the show was very humerus, but very relateable as well.