Communication Evaluations

             This week, I took 3 evaluations on how I communicate. I enjoyed this assignment and am more aware about my communication anxieties, listening skills, and my verbal aggressiveness. Overall and for the most part, my results came out as I anticipated.

The first one was about my communication anxiety and basically how I feel about communicating with others. I generally do not enjoy public speaking but I am fine in small speaking experiences like in a meeting with my co-workers or family members. Basically I understand more how I really need to work on my public speaking anxieties if I ever want to be in a professional position where it is necessary (which is likely). My husband and co-workers also did a good job of pointing out these communication anxieties about me. Only Chris feels that I am more nervous about speaking than what I or anyone else estimated. I appreciate my husband’s honesty and my co-workers faith in me J

The second part was about my listening skills. One of the questions asked if I check the clock often while someone is speaking to me. This was an aspect of listening I had not thought about before. I usually do not look at the clock and rush someone unless I have somewhere important to go. I try to always listen to the people who come to me. I am more aware though of how important it is to be in the moment when someone is confiding or talking to me. Chris and my co-workers assessed me the exact same way I assessed myself on this evaluation. That was interesting! Glad to know they feel I am a good listener like how I imagine.

The last test was about verbal aggressiveness. This was one that my husband and co-workers also guessed the same as me. I have zero verbal aggressiveness. I very rarely try to attack someone’s character to persuade them or anything of that nature. I can’t think of a time that I have. Overall, it looks like I am pretty easy to pin down when it comes to my tendency to attack verbally. Maybe in some cases this type of communicating is what people need to do the right thing but I wouldn’t know because I don’t test it.

Since I enjoyed this assignment so much, Chris did the evaluations on him as well and found out more about himself. After this assignment, I am more conscientious about my communication and listening skills and how they affect my overall, daily communication skills with the children, families, and people in my life.

Effective communication with diverse groups

            The people in my workplace, neighborhood, and family are a diverse group of people. Each day I converse with these various people to get things done and convey vital messages. At work, I interact with young children, African American, Mexican, and Jewish teachers and staff. Some of my family members are married to people who are of African American descent and some family members are atheist. I have older family members and every one of my neighbors in a 4 block radius are from the baby boomers generation.   

            I speak to these people in different ways and in ways that help to convey my messages best. I use the different ranges of my tone of voice often when I speak to children. Children respond to my tone well so I use it according to what I am telling the children. When I want to show that I am disappointed in a child or let them know that they should do something a different way, my tone lowers. When I am playful, celebrating them, or explaining something, my tone is higher. I also use a more cheerful and higher tone of voice when I am speaking to people whom I want something from or are trying to be convincing; including my parents, boss, and husband lol! I don’t necessary speak to people according to the specific group they belong to. I speak to them according to the unique person they are and how they receive messages. Some of the older people in my neighborhood are very different and receive the same messages differently. The women on each side of my house are both over 65 and are widowed. One has an A type personality, is organized, and rarely breaks her routine. You can always find her watering her plants at 5 am and 8 pm each day it doesn’t rain. I love talking to her about home designing tips and decor. My communication style is more conservative with her. I am more of a B type personality and I love learning from her about home organization and other things that help make my life easier since I tend to struggle in that department. My other neighbor is more laid back and goes out on dates all the time. When I talk to her, I know she will laugh at jokes that are a bit unacceptable and I have more fun with her. I have always felt that I am an old soul at heart and relate to the older generation of people better than my own generation.

My friends are my co-workers and family. I relate to my co-teacher in many ways yet we are opposites. We both advocate for young children and seniors. She is African American in her 50’s and has been in the child care business over 3 times longer than I have. I appreciate her knowledge and feel comfortable confiding in her about my personal life. I can be laid back with her and because she understands me I don’t have to explain myself often when I am trying to convey a message. She gets me. She is a lot of fun and speaks up for herself often. I am more quiet and avoid conflict so I like being close to someone who speaks the truth so often without fear of the repercussions or reactions. I learn from her about how to speak up more and get what you want. Most of what I feel safe speaking to her about I do not feel safe speaking to my boss about. My boss is more serious and does not chit-chat much. I am more reserved and professional around her. Most of our conversations are during meetings and through emails about work. When I am with my aunts, uncles, and parents, my behavior and communication style is a little more reserved and respectful of their expectations of me. When I am with my cousins, we cut up a little more and anything goes. I speak more professionally to my colleagues and teachers. More of my passions and goals about myself, child care, and the early childhood field come out in my communications with my teachers and classmates. I make sure to write more professional and formal emails when writing to them. These conversations include more vital information and my choice of communication is crucial to conveying the message I wish to get across. My classmates, co-workers and teachers often use words that relate to early childhood that no other people in my life know about or use.

I use words and styles of communicating differently depending on the people I am communicating with. This can be complicated and I will always be learning about how to do this skillfully. Here are some strategies I use to communicate effectively with different people:

1.      Pay close attention to behavior and non-verbal cues. How often are people making eye-contact and what do they do with their arms?  If someone is not making eye contact with you then they are telling you they are not interested in what you have to say. If they are crossing their arms then they are showing that they are protecting themselves and are more reserved to the conversation or group of people they are around.

2.      Be knowledgeable of yourself and your preferred style of communicating. Ask yourself if your tendency to speak the truth no matter what is good during an introduction meeting with the new families in your classroom. While I am meeting my new families during open house, I make sure to let my usually more reserved personality come out more so they can get to know me better.

3.      Research any information about the people you are about to have crucial conversations with so you are best prepared. This helps to get through some of those initial basic misunderstandings one may have about a certain group so that the more important messages get addressed.

Anyone use these strategies already or have improvements? Do you think these are truly effective for you?

Body Language

                   In this blog post, I am going to share my thoughts on body language. I am going to watch a show that I am not familiar with while it is muted and then discuss my thoughts on how they used body language and eye contact to communicate. I will try to guess what their conversations were about based on only what I saw from them.

                  I watched the show The Tudors and had only watched a few episodes before I did this assignment. I am familiar with this history but do not know much about King Henry’s wives. It was very interesting looking at the characters movements while the volume was muted. The show I watched was about halfway through the series. This episode showed their wedding so I know that they are husband and wife in this episode. King Henry and his Queen Anne of Cleves are in this episode the most. It is obvious through the kings’ facial expressions that he does not like his new wife. He looks mad at times and disinterested in her. Anne’s facial expressions and shaking hands show that she is very nervous and made me think that she is scared of him. Maybe she thinks he will kill her. Their marriage looks very strained and full of discontentment. The King also bangs a table as he is talking to a room full of men showing anger towards them it looks like. The men look down and do make much eye contact with the King.

                    For the second part of this assignment I watched the show with the volume on and got clarity on my assumptions. My assumptions were mostly correct.  They were very unhappy with each other. The King was not attracted to her for many reasons. She was too uneducated about him to know how to make him happy so that explains her nervousness. She was German and they only married to get political favor. He was lied to about how happy he would be with her and he lashes out at his assistants. I’m sure that my assumptions would have been more correct had I been more familiar with this show and its history.

New class, new insights

This week I will be sharing someone whom I look to for advice and an example of how to communicate more effectively. 

                

                 The first person that comes to mind who uses effective communication is my mother. She is smart, funny and knows how to get her point across. She has always taught me new perspectives through her witty use of words. She gets me more than most people I know and that helps her to explain things to me in a way I understand. Unlike me, reading is big hobby of hers. It is because if this hobby that she has learned many words that most people don’t use or even know about. She has taught me these words and I hope I will learn to love the hobby of reading like she has. I almost always go to her for clarity on the things I struggle with. Honestly, I can surly count on her and my husband when I need advice.

                She is a professional who counts on her communication skills to lead her team at work. I look up to her as I grow professionally myself. I hope I can improve my effective communication skills to be as good as her as my conversations at work grow more crucial and important to achieving my goals for myself and the young children and families I serve. I am looking to her to guide me in my goal to become a better leader and communicator as needed in the early childhood field.  

Professional hopes and goals

                       I have learned countless valuable lessons and gained so much knowledge about diversity in the early childhood classroom. I definitely learned more about the human condition and society as well as more about child development and practices. This has been one of my most enjoyable and eye-opening classes yet

                      One hope I have as it relates to children and families that come from diverse backgrounds is for more child practitioners to learn about the importance of diversity. I hope more teachers and center directors value diversity and learn how to serve diverse families in ways that suit these children and families best. I want to see more classes on diversity in the certification programs offered by schools and at my local child resources office.  I will definitely always try to share my knowledge, be an example, and teach these lessons to my fellow teachers.

                      One goal I have for the early childhood field as it relates to diversity, equity, and social justice is to grow a more diverse group of teachers and directors. I think having a very diverse groups of staff helps more in sending out the positive message of diversity to the children it serves. This goes for all groups of people: disabled, older generation, people from various ethnicities and who speak other languages, ect.. Specifically, I would like to see more men working in the field. There are many valuable experiences in having a male preschool teacher included in the classroom. There is a pretty even amount of female to male teachers in middle school and up but not as many men in grades below that. In my 7 years of working in a preschool, I have only seen one male teacher and he was wonderful with the children. One way this could be done is to encourage more boys/men in high school to take on these jobs and careers as they decide for college. It may also help if the benefits and salaries of preschool teachers rose. I found a wonderful resource from the Early Childhood News website about men working in the early childhood field: http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=400

                      I want to thank all of my classmates for their incredibly insightful comments and discussion posts. I am going to take all of the knowledge you shared with me as I teach and lead others. I lok forward to seeing you all again in the next class and best of luck to you!

Welcoming Families from Around the World

               This week I am going to research a country I know nothing about. This is great to do to help children and families feel welcome and supported. This will also help me to be more informed and do my job better. The country I picked is Indonesia. Before I read about this country, I didn’t even know where it was located.

Five ways I plan on preparing myself to be culturally responsive towards this family:

1.      ~I will make sure to learn about all the aspects of their native language; what it sounds like, if there are other similar languages native to that country, and familiarize myself with some basic words.

2.     ~ I plan to read about the countries child care practices past and present. What is the most common form of child care and what are its costs? What are some popular child rearing practices and family set-ups?

3.     ~I will research the state of the government and its history.

4.      ~I will give them a “get to know me” sheet to get some basic information on the family, such as, the child’s likes and dislikes, the parents jobs, and other unique aspects of the family and child.

5.      ~I plan on adding toys and books about Indonesia with the hope of sharing this information with the rest of the children and making the new child feel welcome.

6.     ~ I will look up information on their surface culture.

             I hope these preparations give me the confidence I need to feel that I can serve this family it their best interests. I do a better job when I feel informed, knowledgeable, and confident in my abilities.  I hope that the family will gain a sense of trust and partnership with me. This task can take some time but the sooner the better. The better I can serve this family and make them feel welcome, the better they will feel about working with me in caring for their child. 

My experience

                Since I have been learning about microaggressions, inequities, and oppression, I have been watching out for and noticing their examples. Just last week I noticed an example of an inequity/discrimination within a community college I used to attend.

                 I was at the front desk getting some info on a class and a black woman came up to the counter. She asked the lady (who was white) if she could pull up her account and let her know what classes are coming up next semester. As she was explaining them to her, the black woman asked why she wasn’t register to take a certain class she was expecting to take. The girl behind the counter said that she can only take two classes this semester and was penalized for taking a class twice. The black woman explained that she took the class to get a better grade and is aiming for a 4.0 GPA. The girl behind the counter repeated her comment and said that was the policy. The black woman was upset and confused and made it clear that something was wrong about that policy. My initial thought was that the student was in the right and that she could have been discriminated against. I am very certain that students are allowed to take a class a second time, and only a second time, to improve their grade. She is trying to graduate with honors and maybe this particular white girl or whoever penalized her in the computer system did not like this successful black woman. It was certainly a fishy conversation and I would have been upset myself if had happened to me; especially if it is about the color of my skin. The lady behind the counter might have been misunderstood about the policy. I really cannot say for sure. I know one thing for sure, if my assumptions are correct, then the white girl or whoever penalized her needs a lesson on tolerance, equality, and herself. That is the only way this inequity could change for the better.

              I don’t think I would have thought about this being an act of discrimination before having taken this class. I probably would have not thought about it much. It has my eyes open and I am glad for it. I hope I can influence others in doing the right thing.