Delicate Dance

Communicating within my home and professional life.

I am completely two different people when it comes to communicating at home and at work.  I have to really challenge myself and use my educational strategies to communicate on the level in which is expected at work.  I have such a diverse group of staff and families to interact with daily that usually deals with highly emotional subject matters.  From a child being sick, to a parents divorcing I find myself using my counseling hat to help those around me.  At home the family unfortunately gets the short end of the stick.  Being a single mother for so many years, I have found myself being with my children all the time but rarely present.  I have had to work in the past few years really listening and using better communication skills to create a two street with my children.  As they have gotten older it has become even more important to tell them how I feel, and hear what they have to say.  Looking from the outside in, some might observe that my children cross the lines of respect and appropriate behavior.  I have worked very hard not to impede the communication with my children, even though sometimes it can be very challenging.  Our rules of engagement, if you will, are that if they are upset  and the challenges they face as children that they will use trial and error with the types of response they receives and to be able to learn the benefits of responding verses reacting.  Communication for me is a work of art that is a delicate dance between emotion and strategies that yield the anticipated outcome. 

Week 2

Duck Dynasty

No Sound

I observed laughter, smiling, and close interaction with a small group of people, hunting, and working in some type of warehouse.

The interactions between the characters varied but for the most part looked like they enjoyed each other’s company. The show looks like funny acts are taking place, and common livelihoods are being depicted.

Each of the family member talk to each other looking and expressing emotions through facial expression. At the end of the episode all of the characters ate at the same table.

Sound

This episode of Duck Dynasty was hilarious. This is a family owed business that even the workers who are not family are adopted family. The family interacts well with each other and expresses using language that is not offensive and is funny to each other. Each member has a good rapport with each other, and each has their own role within the family. The dad is the CEO of the duck call making company and their family is very different from the lifestyle they grew up in. The teenage sons are verbally challenged by technology and the teenage daughter relies on texting for all communication. Even communicating through text when she is in the same room with the person. I love that even though they give each other a hard time and joke with one another they are all able to communicate to one another how important family is to each of them. I actually thought from the characters appearance that they would communicate with very little skill or sensitivity. That was not the case. Even with the southern accent the characters were able to communicate effectively.

Communicating Excellence

I would have to say that my worst critic would also be my greatest mentor.  The division branch manager for our program.  This is a true professional who has worked many years perfecting her communication behaviors.  I believes that she demonstrated wonderful communication skills in relaxed casual setting as well as a professional audience.  Her demeanor, her presences and her calming affect that she has on every person she comes into contact with wants to hold a conversation.  Her best quality is her ability to listen and respond to people appropriately. When she finds herself in confrontational or uncomfortable scenarios she responds instead of reacting to the situation.  This is something that I work for every time I find myself in a highly volatile or emotional situations.  This division branch manager is very quick to critic how that I handle stressful types of situations and conversations.  I have grown tremendously as a professional communicator because of her leadership.

A Note of Thanks

My hope in working with any family is to make them feel respected, valued, and welcome.  I believe that through all of the educational resources that we have any family can be a part of any community.  It’s my hope that in time our profession will empower the children of our future to accept everyone as equals.  I would like to pursue the social justice aspect of diversity and learn what types of proactive measures that I can take for the children of tomorrow.  As with each of my graduate classes, I have enjoyed my colleague’s comments, suggestions, and ideas.  Each of the people I have come to know is so unique and passionate about children and it makes me feel very honored to be included in this program.  Thank you all for a great class!

Welcoming a Family from Nigeria

As I prepare to travel to Colorado to see my baby brother deploy to Nigeria on a Special Forces mission, I would love to learn to about Nigeria. 

The family is from Hausa native culture.  The children have only spoken Hausa and the oldest child can speak very little English.

In preparation for this family’s arrival I am going prepare the classroom with PIC cards that describe the activities in their native language.

I will have a list of Islamic resources and religious affiliated organizations

I will recruit our military interpreter that speaks Arabic to be available upon arrival to help with translation.

Ensure to explain about the meals and snacks that our program provides and the reassure the children they will not experience hunger in our program.

Week Six My Journey

Since starting with my organization I have been vaguely aware that certain personal is afraid to hold the African American staff to the same expectations of all the other staff.  I am fairly new and still learning the history of our growth and lessons learned.  I have never truly witnessed personal bias in this capacity.   It has almost become a prejudice not of African Americans but a prejudice that African American staff will use their race to get what they want, or to get out what they do not want to do.    I have never felt differently about supervising anyone from any race, gender, age or background.  I have personally witnessed such fear of prejudice that they were actually being prejudice themselves.   The affect of prejudice among our leadership has diminished equity significantly.  It creates an environment in which all employees are not treated equally nor are they held accountable to the same standard.  Being able to lead, guide, mentor, and supervise employees equally is imperative. I want staff to always know that as their supervisor I will always treat them as individualize, and uphold them to the same standard as their collogues.  As I continue to grow and learn to lead my staff I hope that all my staff regardless of their ethnical background will appreciate that they are treated fair, and held to the same standards.

Practicing Awareness of Microaggressions

The child development program aboard our military installation has a variety of resources available to us to help with all types of classroom challenges.  One in particular is our behavior specialist.  This person assesses classrooms and the children within those classrooms that need additional support.  This is a fairly new position within our organization and we have received little to no guidance on the person’s role and or her jurisdiction when it comes to performance expectations among staff members.  This team member is of equal seniority/ rank as I am the director.  The behavior specialist has a completely separate supervisor, and I have no say in what the behavior specialist implements inside my classroom.  Ideally this is supposed to be a partnership, however micro aggression is slowly tearing this, potentially amazing team, apart.  It’s my experience since accepting a role as an administrator that the most common form of micro aggression I experience is through mass distribution email.  Through these emails statements are made to insinuate that administration does not “have correct staff in classrooms”, “that directors need to learn get rooms under control before progress with children can be made,” and “they do not have a clue what is going on with these classrooms.” All of the emails are copied to all of upper management and never discussed privately with individual director.  It is so hurtful to be lumped together, and I feel like I had no sense of individual center identity.  I have been able to get more clarity on the different forms and the varying degrees of discrimination.  Micro aggression may sound small and insignificant in descriptive term, but its implications are tremendous