Thanks for all you support

 During the past eight weeks, I have received awesome support from my colleagues.  They have supported me by responding to my discussions and giving me new insight on communication skills.  The blogs that they write are exciting to read, having the opportunity to learn from them, and hearing the scenarios they presented about their experiences have supported me a great deal.  I hope that I have given them the same type of support that they wanted from the course in blogs and discussions.  I added information regarding my experience in meetings and team activities with colleagues at work.  This was my way of sharing my knowledge and growth in the field of Early Childhood Education.

I wish all my colleagues that their goals in their career of Early Childhood Education be what they are looking for, continue to support, and advocate for our children in the world.  As we come to the end of Masters Degree Program, I congratulate everyone.  I hope to pursue a job as a college professor for Early Childhood Education.

If anyone needs a little support or just some insight, you may reach me at ggmp0908@aol.com.  I will be glad to continue to encourage and support my fellow colleagues.  Thank you so much for the opportunity of knowing each one of you.

Merry Christmas to All!

In addition, A Happy New Year!

Team Building and Collaboration, Part 1- The adjourning process

I have been involved in many different groups in my life that I found it difficult to choose the highest performing group that was hard to leave.  After deep thought I came up with a group I was involved in at Wilberforce University.  We met every week for class off campus in a business office.  We became very close as we learned about Information Technology.  We were also very close with the instructor, too.  When it came time for the program to end, we had huge pizza party and gave our farewells.  We exchanged telephone numbers, email addresses and we stayed in touch for a little while.  However as the years pass we fell out of touch and do not communicate as much.

I found that group the hardest to leave because we worked well as a team to succeed in the BS degree program.  As I am engage with the colleagues in this course, I feel that we have grown to know each other by reading our blog’s, discussion boards, and emails.  It will be hard to face the end of the course because of being familiar of meeting with the group daily to discuss aspects of our lives related to our career.  I hope that we will adjourn by sharing email addresses and staying in contact as much as possible, as we pursue our goals.

The adjourning process of teamwork is the part where teams celebrate the accomplishments or review the errors to prevent it from occurring again (Abudi, 2010).  We say goodbye and look forward somewhere in the future to come together again as a team.

Reference:

Abudi, G. (2010). The five stages of team development: A case study. Retrieved from http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/the-five-stages-of-team-development-a-case-study.html

Conflict Resolution

Normally I tend to avoid conflicts or I look for ways to understand why that person is aggressive in tone and actions before I respond.  However, when it comes to my ex-husband I am the opposite.  I will be on the defense with him at all times.  We argue like cats and dogs, I have tried many avenues of ignoring to using positive communication with him, but it just does not work.  He is very demanding, insensitive, controlling, and uses foul language in a conversation.  I hope that with the tactics I have learned in this course about non-violent communication will help as we continue to see and talk to each other.  I tried using the win/win approach with him today.  We were talking on the phone about our children and he kept asking me question after question about them to the point I just said, “Have you talked to them today?”  He responded, “No.”  Then I said, “I am sure they can answer all your questions, if you give them a call because I do not seem to have the answers you are looking for.”  That is the first conversation in years that we agreed and hung up without being frustrated with each other.  Therefore, I was able to use the cooperative strategy to get him to stop questioning me instead of using verbal aggression.

After being married to him for 28 years and now that we are divorce, he is still in the picture due to the children and grandchildren it is very hard to ignore his tone and aggressiveness.  However, with the Holidays being here and knowledge from this class I am sure I can get through this with using the win/win approach and the cooperative strategy.

If anyone has any suggestions on how I can make it through this holiday in peace with my ex-husband?  Please share them.  Thank you