Communication evaluation

      The one thing that surprised me the most was the fact that both my sister and my friend Eric think I do a nice job speaking in public. Public speaking is a huge no no for me. I get nervous and try to avoid it at all costs. I do very well in small groups, so maybe they see some confidence there and think that it transfers over to large groups.

     One insight that I have learned this week is; I love interacting with people and feel that I am pretty good at communication and taking the 3 “tests” this week has showed me that I am pretty decent at it. Knowing that I actually have effective communication skills makes me feel better about interacting with people. 

       Another insight that I have gained is that I need to work on being less argumentative when communicating with people. I do listen to what they have to say but I like to argue. I need to work on this:)

      These insights will help me communicate better both personally and professionally so that I don’t argue with parents or colleuages, or even my sisters. I also know that I need to work more on public speaking to large groups for things that I would like to do in this career field. 

Communincation

At my school we don’t have a big cultural gap. We have a few male teachers, we have a few Mormon teachers and some catholics, lutherans, and mostly while female teachers. That makes up the diversity of my colleagues at my school. I do visit and get along with them all. I love my staff and feel that we have a good relationship in our school. There is a sense of community. I don’t really think I communicate any differently, we are very open with each other and I might use different vocabulary, and ask different questions but essentially they are my work family and I love that. We go to others family functions like, weddings and graduations.I would say there is mutual trust and respect amongst us. 

Three strategies that I could use to help me be a more effective communicator would be to first look at things from their perspective. In order to understand where the person is coming from you need to be open to what they are saying. 

The second thing is to not make assumptions. You have no idea where people come from or what people are thinking or feeling. Listen to what they have to say. If you don’t listen, you could be judging them with out any idea what they were talking about. 

The third thing is become consciously aware of peoples nonverbal communication and what there actions are saying instead of just their words. Nonverbal actions sometimes so way more then what people are saying. 

Communication through nonverbal clues

I have been spending a lot of time at the lake so I didn’t have any way to record a show but, I borrowed a season of One Tree Hill from my sister to watch. I have seen the show a few times when she watched it, but not enough to know what is going on. I watched an episode where a wedding was taking place. Everyone seemed to be very close friends or family. There was lots of hugging and smiling. You can tell the bride and maid of honor are best friends with how many smiles and hugs they share. The bride is pregnant and looks so happy and emotional that she starts to cry. They looks to be a lot of couples because there is a lot of kissing and embracing. 

As I said they all seem to care a lot about each other. There is laughing, kissing, hugging, smiling, and all around general happiness, after all it is a wedding. At the end of the show the bride and groom went to their house and, the bride starts to have labor pain and starts bleeding, when the groom goes to the garage. He comes back to find her in a pile of blood on the floor, so then there is lots of scared panic it look like on his face and it ends there.

When I watched the show with the sound on, I was pretty correct with the part that they are close friends and family. They all had a connection to each other and were sharing happy memories. There were some characters that had a feud at the beginning of the show but they were still smiling and laughing at each other that I couldn’t tell they were being sarcastic and had a mean tone of voice. However these same characters by the end of the show made up and were really happy with each other. 

I suppose my assumptions would have been different if I had watched a show, were I already know the characters, and even if I would have picked a different episode of this show. I watched one close to the end of the season she had and it was a good episode. It makes me realize that with out the sound and with out knowing these characters, I couldn’t tell that some of them were not getting along. Their nonverbal clues showed that they were smiling and laughing. I think that it is important to know both aspects of communication the verbal and nonverbal so that I can be more effective in communication. 

What Is Communication?

As I continue on my journey through this course I am excited and thrilled with what I have learned so far and will continue to learn. In this course we are learning about effective communication and need pick someone that shows effective communication skills.
 As soon as I read this assignment the first person that came to mind was a colleague of mine. Her name is Amy and she has been a Kindergarten teacher for 17 years. She is my mentor at school and I don't know if I would have survived my first year with out her. She has built such a rapport with her students, colleagues, parents and administrators. She is a true leader. She follows the Love and Logic model in her classroom and in her life and it looks like is comes so naturally to her. She takes on many roles in the education system, and helps anyone who needs it. She is loyal, honest, has an amazing work ethic, is supportive, and firm all at the same time.
I do try to model my communication skills after Amy and have even taken Love and Logic classes. I feel that I have pretty good communication skills, but the way she is with everyone is inspiring. I also know that I have only been teaching for 5 years and hopefully with the help of this class and more experience I will get to the level of communication that Amy has with people.