Thanks and goodbye!

I want to thank all of you for your support and feedback the last 8 weeks in this course. I truly appreciate it and look forward to hopefully working with you all again. Your kindness, understanding and thoughts have helped me a lot.  I would love to keep in touch so here is my email, rachael_mikkel@hotmail.com.

Thanks again,
Best of luck to all of you!!

Working in groups, and the final Goodbye

When I think back to the groups that I have been apart of, some of them were harder to say goodbye to then others. They reason I think this is, is because I worked better with some groups then others. There was a sense of community, respect, and trust. These things we know are very important for an effective group. This groups also were also high-performing, because we all had a common goal and a common purpose for being in the group. The groups were it wasn’t hard to say goodbye, was because people were not doing there part, they didn’t care about the goal, and they were hard to trust. 

One of the groups that I enjoyed being in and where it was hard to say goodbye was my group in the Elementary Program for Blocks. We all got along really well and they was a good sense of teamwork and an overall sense of friendship with them. When the time was coming to an end we reflected on what we learned and just shared some memories of our 16 weeks working together. After wards a bunch of us went to supper, and had a good time. I am still friends with this group and a lot of us are teachers now and we share stories all the time. “It is likely that any group that reached Stage 4: Performing will keep in touch with each other as they have become a very close knit group and there will be sadness at separating and moving on to other projects independently” (Abudi, 2010). I really like the fact that we reflected on what we had learned in the group, because there were sometimes when we all didn’t agree on something and we had to work it out. 

I feel that this amazing group of colleagues that I have been working with in the Master’s program will be just as hard. I have learned so many things from all of them and they have helped me see things from different perspectives. Even though many of us are going in different directions with our career in Early Childhood, I hope that we can keep in touch after we adjourn from the group. I know that, “In the "adjourning" stage the project is coming to an end and the team members are moving off into different directions”(Abudi, 2010). I know we will celebrate and congratulate each other on the amazing achievement that we accomplished together. Adjourning is very important at the end because it gives you a chance to say goodbye to people who might even feel like family, because you have worked so closely together. 

Resources:

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 Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu on August 8, 2014.

Personal Conflict

One conflict I can think of that I had recently (about a month ago) was with my  best friend Amber. We were going to go out of town for a softball tournament and she has come with for the last 4 years with my team. We go and hang out she goes shopping and we watch our other friends play ball. It is just a nice girls get away weekend with no husbands or boyfriends. Recently every time I asked her to do something she always said no. I have tried to be understanding because I knew she was going through some things and just shook it off like no big deal. Well a week before we were suppose to leave for this tournament she texts me and says she doesn’t want to go, it will be too much money and she just didn’t want to go this year. This text was the first thing I saw in the morning and after her bailing on me for the last three weeks I had had enough. I text her back because she was at work, and told her I was fed up with her canceling our plans all the time and then canceling on me this time. We went on texting each other all day saying hurtful things to each other, now that I think back on it. We didn’t talk again till I was getting ready to leave and she called and wished my team luck and said she was sorry. By then I was mostly over it as well, but still hurt that she backed out. I replied with my thanks and told her I would call her when I got back. After that I just let it go. It never really got resolved but, we both kinda moved on from it. 

From this course there are some strategies that I could have done differently to maybe help us both out. First off I don’t think that she was really seeing things from my side. According to Thirdside, “In order to consider the whole you need to understand each side within itself. We often predispose ourselves to seeing the world one way. Listening allows us on opportunity to see from multiple vantage points and allows us to see the whole” (http://www.thirdside.org, 2014). I try to be supportive and understanding of what she was going through at the time but, I don’t think she was seeing things from my side. If we would have actually sat down and tried to understand each other’s point of view, I am sure we would have worked things out sooner. 

The second strategy is to not avoid the conflict. I am not much for conflict and that is why I let this go on for so long before I blew up. That is also why I didn’t really say anything when she called me back. I had said what I wanted to say and I was done with it. I didn’t want to argue anymore. However, “Conflict is a natural and healthy process, necessary for making progress and dealing with injustice. The world may actually need more conflict, not less, if the appropriate skills are known and conflict can be managed productively.” (http://www.thirdside.org, 2014). 

With this classI would have handled this situation completely differently. I would not have avoided the situation as much as I did. I would have listened more to what she had to say and see more of her side. I hope with me doing this, Amber would have tried to see things more from my side as well. 

Resources: 

The Third Side. (n.d.). The third side. Retrieved from http://www.thirdside.org/ Retrieved from https://class.waldenu.edu/ on August 2, 2014.