Personal Thank You

I want to take the time and thank all my colleagues for their support throughout the class. I enjoyed learning about your communication experiences, and how you over came communication roadblocks. I know the knowledge we learned in this class will be successful as we continue on this journey and in our professional lives. I wish nothing but the best for you! Good luck!

Adjourning

The last stage of team development, is adjourning. I think groups that are high-performing and have the clearest established morns are the hardest to leave because you all worked so hard together to achieve the goal and probably became pretty close to each other in the process. I remember in high school I was a part of the FCCLA student organization. I became great friends with many of the girls in the group, and some are still my best friends today. My senior year in high school, most of my friends and I were the officers. At our end of the year awards banquet, we always have a ceremony where the officers hand over their position to the newly elected officers. It was a bittersweet good-bye because the organization taught me so much, and I was leaving some friends behind when I went off to college, but it was nice knowing I helped build the successful group, and we were handing over the reigns to a new group of officers/leaders.

I feel I have gotten to know a lot of my colleagues throughout this journey. Some I have been with since I started this journey. Its nice knowing that I am not alone in this journey, and have colleagues to help me and support me through this journey. I will owe a huge thank you to everyone at the conclusion of this program because you all have taught me numerous of different things in many different ways, and have made me a better person. Overall, I think adjourning is essential stage in teamwork because we all get a chance to say thank you for all the work we have done, and for the help we gave and received.

Disagreement

Since I start a new job this coming school year and have been off all summer, I can't really think of any disagreements or conflicts that I currently experience at work. So a disagreement I am currently having is actually with my mom over wedding planning for my wedding. I informed her that I wasn't planning on having a videographer for my wedding because I wanted to use the money for a decorating idea I have. She is not very happy because she thinks the video is more important than the decorations. I told her I could have a family member video tape the wedding and such and it would be much more cheaper. After a couple of weeks we are still in a disagreement, and we often end up fighting over it when it gets brought up. One stragey I think I could use that would solve this disagreement is try to come up with a compromise to the disagreement, such has if they are willing to pay half of the videographer we'll pay the other half, and I'll still have money for the decorations. Another stratgey I could use tot solve this disagreement is try to see the situation through my mom's point of view. Instead of getting defensive, maybe I need to remain calm and compassionate, and maybe then we can come up with a solution without it ending in a yelling match.

Just curious if anyone ever had a problem like this before, and curious how you handled it, or any advice you can give me on how to handle this disagreement. 

Communicating Evaluation

Looking at how I evaluated myself and how others evaluated me, one thing that kind of surprised me was realized that people described me at a people-orientated person. This surprised me because, I'm definitely a people person, and sometimes too trusting of others. I was surprised most that my mom and my friend who took the survey know it too. My friend always comments on how sometimes I'm too trusting of people, and I always blew her off, until someone I trusted "threw me under the bus" once and she was like "I told you so". I always thought being a people-oriented person was a good thing, but there are some negatives to it. This might affect my professional life because I may become too trusting, and it may hinder my judgment in situations when it comes to making professional decisions. It also might affect my personal life because I may get seriously hurt by someone I originally thought I could trust, and relationships could be ruined.

The another thing that did surprise me the most was the verbal aggression scale survey. I was considered significant by myself and by the people the evaluated me. I was surprised by this because under the description it talked about how I might cross the line and become argumentativeness. This actually kind of surprised me because I hate getting into arguments...I really try to avoid arguments, and I think sometimes just keep what I really want to say to myself, because I know it will either start an argument or make the argument even worse. This mindset might affect my professional work because I am back down if someone confronts me instead of standing up to them, and this might affect my personal life because I'm not given my full opinion, and thus may not get my say on topics or activities.

Communication Differences

 Looking at how I communicate with people of different culture, I don't think I communicate with them any differently than I do of someone from the same culture. If you would have asked me 5 years ago, I might have said yes because I was a very narrowed minded person when I started teaching. When I started teaching I thought everyone, students, colleagues, and families were are like I had growing up. I quickly realized that wasn't the case, and that people were greatly different from myself. I had to change the way I saw them, and change my way of communicating with them to be respectful. Instead of thinking of them as different, I had remind myself that just because they aren't like me, doesn't mean that I should treat them any differently then someone who is like me. I realized that if i let my personal biases and ideas come into my teaching, I wouldn't be able to form relationships with students, parents, and colleagues, that I have now. 

TV Show Analysis

Brothers and Sisters: TV Show

Black Font: Assumptions
Red Font: What Actually Happened

Characters are all family

Nora: Mother
William: Deceased Father
Sarah: Sister
Kitty: Sister
Tommy: Brother
Kevin: Brother
Justin: Brother

Judging from the flashbacks that are happening, the father has recently died

Father recently died of a heart attack

They are concerned about the one character (Justin) that is in the hospital

They are worried about Justin who overdosed because he got a letter saying he had to go back to the Army to fight in Iraq. Flashbacks show that the family was against him joining the Army in the 1^st place right after 9-11.

They have a family business that causes a lot of arguments, may be in trouble/3 of siblings (Sarah, Tommy, and Kevin) work together in it judging how they are going on a trip together and were in a meeting together/Got excited over news they found while on their trip/family is all excited about the findings

Father was hiding something. Sarah, Tommy, and Kevin work together. Kevin is the lawyer for the company. Apparently their father brought land in the desert, and they have no reason why. They were excited because they found out that the land belonged to the Army and was worth a lot of money. Enough money to save the family business

Apparently Sarah found out that their dad had another child with his mistress and she tells the Kevin and Tommy

Girl (Kitty) in a relationships with co-worker…maybe involved with another co-worker too? Love triangle

Male co-worker is involved with the intern, not Kitty; although judging by the hug her gave Kitty after she told him about how the Army called Justin back to fight in Iraq, they may have been in a relationship in the past

Mom is worried about son over something/taking frustration out by cooking (can tell by how she is kneading bread really hard)/crying in the pantry closet

Worried over Justin going back to war and losing him too after she just lost her husband

One brother doesn’t know anything about cars/apparently messed it up and car is in shop. The another brother chases him for screwing up

He poured water into the engine instead of the oil filter which caused the car to break down

Another daughter has a TV show judging by how she interviewed someone in front of the camera/another female co-worker goes to the boss about something the one daughter did, obviously jealous over something/girl did something during the tape interview that she is apologizing for now. Can tell by her disappointed and upset face as she’s talking about/she apparently did a favor for the person she interviewed

Kitty is a political pundit on a TV show, and is interviewing a senator. Senator asked Kitty not to bring up his divorce in return of him doing her a favor. Kitty asked him to pull strings so her brother didn’t have to go back to Iraq. Senator couldn’t do it, and that’s why Kitty apologized. Senator thanks Kitty at the end of the show and offers her a position on his staff.

Daughter is upset with male co-worker/one she is in a relationship with, and now crying to male co-worker over the issue

Male co-worker tells his girlfriend/inter that he thought Kitty bribed the Senator. Kitty confesses how the first time Justin left, it broke the family up, and she’s afraid it’s going to happen again, and she will be blamed for it. She admits she is scared for her brother’s safety.

Family likes to drink, alcohol, wine and such in many scenes

Wine at meals, drinking in a bar

One brother (Kevin) is apparently gay about how he approached another guy and looked about him

When car breaks down, Kevin says the other siblings aren’t allowed to make gay jokes/comments; sleeps with a guy he meets at a bar

Sister on TV (Kitty) doesn’t know how to cook judging by how she was cracking open an egg and stirring with a whisk and burnt pie

When Kitty volunteers to help cook for Thanksgiving, Nora comments on how she is not a very good chef. Justin jokes as well when he sees her helping in the kitchen.

Another brother announces some excited news at the end of the table with his wife. Judging by how the family reacted. They are expecting a child

Tommy and his wife Julia are expecting their first child

While doing this assignment, I realized that verbal communication plays a vital role in understanding what is going on, but you can also get messages and plot lines across from watching the interactions of the characters and their facial expressions. However, I missed a major plot line of when Sarah told Tommy and Kevin that they had another sibling. I thought they were just arguing because of the land was useless. I think if I would watch this show on a regular basics, I would know more about the family and what happened leading up to this episode, so some of the plot lines would make more sense.

By doing this assignment, I learned that verbal communication is needed to reinforce non-verbal communication. I also realized that it is very easy to misinterpret non-verbal communication when you are listening to the verbal communication. I think this is helpful for myself and colleagues because we need to use non-verbal communication to reinforce our verbal messages to ensure we are communicated clearing with families and children.  

Communication Idol

The person I think demonstrates effective communication is my supervisor. I feel that she is an effective communicator because she is always keeping us informed of what is going on, she makes herself available questions, is open suggestions, and gives great constructive criticism during evaluations (never once has her suggestions for improvement, made me feel like I am a bad teacher, unlike my previous supervisor). Also, she does not make assumptions, and makes sure she has all the facts first before talking to someone. She knows there are two sides to every story. I would definitely model some of my own communication behaviors after her because she has developed great, trusting relationships among her staff, and people are respectful of her. Two things I would like to do better.