A Note of Thanks!

As I finish the core work of my master's and move on to my specialization I want to take a moment and look back at the last year and thank my classmates and instructors for keeping me engaged and fired up. It has been a lot of work, and just when I think I need to take a break and put it on hold I learn a new skill  or hear from a classmate about a situation they are working through. I continue to find out that we are all in this together and that recharged me. Thank you all for the hard work and commitment to children and families and for keeping it real and focused on fight the good fight!

Adjourning--Saying Good-bye to A Team...

This week we have been looking at the 5 stages of team development as theorized by Bruce Wayne Tuckman…the following is a slightly compressed and “fun” version of his theory:

So here it is I have some earth shattering news...Bruce Wayne is not only Batman, but he is a theorist who developed four of the five stages for team development. It says right here, Bruce Wayne (Tuckman) coined and created "tuckman's stages" in 1965. Stage 1: Forming (getting the group together, initially your sizing each other up) Stage 2: Storming (this is the how do I fit into the pecking order stage, and I want my ideas to be valued and chosen, insert the need for a facilitator or team leader). Stage 3: Norming (the team starts to become a cohesive group moving in the same general direction the focus is on processes and procedures). Stage 4: Performing (this is a high functioning team, you are on fire, cooking with gas and getting it done!) Here I thought batman was just a prick eared, cape crusading, underwear on the outside of his tights kinda guy. And just to not leaving you hanging the 5th stage was added by MaryAnn Jensen in 1977 and it is adjourning, you came, you saw, you got the t-shirt and now it's time to find a new group.

Our assignment this week is to look at the adjourning phase of a team and report on two separate group adjourning events, an easy good-bye and a not so easy goodbye. Both of these events were weeklong intensives I took for my undergrad program .  One was an Infant Toddler Caregiver II class, one a Reggio-Emilia project approach training. I loved both classes and had fun but at the end of our infant/tod class I actually cried…I’m not a public crier! I couldn’t figure out for the longest time why it affected me so much, until now.  We were instructed to bring three things with us that represented who we were. This was our ice-breaker activity on the first morning of class. We were given small boxes and tables and tables of art supplies, crafty things, and miscellaneous materials to decorate our boxes to tell “our story”. The class was small, I think there were 10 of us, as it was a pilot class. The University wanted to see if it was a program that would be well received and could be offered. Our group was the first in the state to go through this infant toddler extension class (above and beyond the typical 4 credit class that was currently being offered). By the second morning of class we had finished our boxes and began sharing them with the group. What each of us was sharing were the intimate details of our lives and what made us tick; I think it drew us together closely and quickly. We were also staying in a dormitory that was rustic to say the least—no wifi, no television, sketchy cell service. After class on the second night we just all sat out in the hallway and talked til at least 2 in the morning, laughing and getting to know each other. It was so fun, one of my most cherished “college” memories (I was 30 before I ever started my post high school education).

The second grouping was the Reggio class. Still wonderfully fun, taught by my mentor and personal hero in the ECE world.  There were probably 40 of us taking the class, in a Conservation Corps cabin in the mountains just outside of Dillon Montana (super small town). We were placed in small groups of 5 to do our project work. This was the most excruciating group effort I had ever been involved in. My group mates were another provider from my town, two from the Browning Head Start, and one from the Great Falls Head Start. I turned out that the three head start teachers were told by their Ed Coordinators to show up and take this class, they weren’t given a choice, they did not want to be there, it was their summer vacation time.  Myself and the other gal from my town had our own family childcare homes and we were really the go getters of the group because of that fact. We weren’t used to having assistant teachers, or sharing classrooms or any of that kind of interaction. If there was a job to do in our programs it was up to us to get it done. The other girls were used to having to report back to a number of people in order to made decisions. Tough combination; by day 5 I was more than ready to go home. It was drama, discontent and hurt feelings all the way around. When the other girls could not make decisions or add to the project we just did the work without them…they did not like that at all. There was a spot set up in camp to work on conflict resolution—we ended up there twice—the record for any class over the last decade. I learned so much more about myself in that week than I have in my entire life, bad group experience, but amazing self-reflection and personal growth for me personally.

I loved both groupings each in a different way. I think what made the first group more magnanimous was the fact that it was a smaller group overall and we were all present on our own want, not because someone told someone they had to be there. The second reason was the icebreaker…it virtually eliminating the “storming” phase, as we jumped headlong into the norming phase. They tried to repeat the infant/toddler II class one more time after ours and it didn’t go well at all. The University decided not to sponsor it, so perhaps it was a fluke to begin with. I would like to think the stars aligned and we had the right people at the right time to create the mother of all groupings!

The closing activities were similar with both groups but the level of commitment and genuine connectedness with the first group made it so hard to leave. I will remember it forever, and have created a number of friendships that last to this day.

Communication~~Conflict Resolution...

Conflict is defined as a negative interaction between two or more interdependent people, rooted I some actual or perceived disagreement.  Further conflict is broken into unproductive and productive conflict (O'Hair & Wiemann, 2012). Unproductive is just that, when managed poorly there is a negative impact on the relationship. Conversely, a productive conflict produces positive change in any of the following personal growth, ability to compromise, identification of goals to create a more successful interaction and basic relationship building skills. Conflict resolution is a very important skill to possess when working with staff, parents, children, and the public in general. Because working with children and families is emotionally tasking the ability to resolve conflict in an appropriate way is paramount in working in the field.

NVC offers skill building to create a more productive conflict management approach through the following (nnvc.org, 2014):

• Differentiating observation from evaluation, being able to carefully observe what is happening free of evaluation, and to specify behaviors and conditions that are affecting us;
• Differentiating feeling from thinking, being able to identify and express internal feeling states in a way that does not imply judgment, criticism, or blame/punishment;
• Connecting with the universal human needs/values (e.g. sustenance, trust, understanding) in us that are being met or not met in relation to what is happening and how we are feeling; and,
• Requesting what we would like in a way that clearly and specifically states what we do want (rather than what we don’t want), and that is truly a request and not a demand (i.e. attempting to motivate, however subtly, out of fear, guilt, shame, obligation, etc. rather than out of willingness and compassionate giving).

Magda Gerber, an early childhood advocate, teacher and parent educator, who worked under Dr. Emmi Pickler, proposed the idea that relationships take time to build through ongoing respectful, responsive and reciprocal interactions.  

Both NVC and Magda’s approaches to conflict resolution are built on the foundation of mutually respectful relationships and effective communications.  When people are vested in the success or continuance of the relationship, they will use these approaches and ideas to come to a productive resolution of conflict…that means they will use communication (verbal and non-verbal) appropriately to resolve the issues in an amicable and positive way. The positive resolution strengthens the relationship, along with the skills of being an effective communicator, both fundamental goals of working effectively with colleagues and families.

An example of productive conflict resolution is something that just happened in our center the other day, between a staff member and me.  She has been forgetting or not doing the closing checklist each night to make sure tasks are completed and the center is ready for the children the next day. Last Sunday I went into work to catch up on some paperwork and before I left, I decided to unload the dishwasher to help out the opener.  I opened up the dishwasher and it was full of dirty dishes.  I was mad, because I had seen also that the toy shelves hadn’t been straightened and the floor had not been vacuumed. I completed the cleaning tasks, vacuumed and started the dishwasher. On Monday morning instead of getting after the closers from the Friday night, I took a deep breath and asked how Friday went. They said nothing out of the ordinary had happened and there were no late families. I told them about the things I had noticed that weren’t done.  They didn’t have a good reason for no vacuuming or shelf straightening, but each thought the other had started the dishwasher. Instead of a write up, which is what I would have normally done, we discussed that since one of the staff members was new they would make sure the closing sheet was filled out and initialed each night until I got back to them. Then we also discussed that because each person was responsible for signing off on what they were doing that any unfinished job would be a write up.  Each day they would break up the closing duties and work together to get them done.  That way each person wasn’t stuck doing all the chores or thought someone else was doing them. While we had our discussion I listened and was empathetic to their needs while still expressing the importance of making sure the school was ready for the children the next day.  We also agreed upon a procedure if things were crazy that night and if things didn’t get done what would be the protocol.  Before this I would get excuses about who didn’t do what and why I think this time they saw the importance of the task at hand.

References

O'Hair, D., & Wiemann, M. (2012). Real communication. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's.            
The Centers for Non-Violent Communication. http://www.cnvc.org/learn/nvc-foundations