My Thanks to You

What can I say but thank you, for all the words of wisdom that you have passed on to me through my discussions and here on my blog. It has been a great eight weeks, learning about communication and collaboration. It was like pieces of a puzzle, each week I learn something new. I always thought communication was two people having a conversation. It is much more than that. I thank each of you for all of the resources that you have made available for me to use in my studies as I continue to work for our children. I have shared with you my feelings and parts of my life that I would not tell to strangers. You are all my friends. Keep in touch. Remember, stay focus, it is too late to turn back now, just a few more miles to go. Hope to hear from you all. Just my thoughts and opinion, no really it is.

Sandra McNair

ADJOURNING

Are high-performing groups hardest to leave? Yes. It is very hard to leave anything that may be doing well.

Groups with the clearest established norms?  Yes. Again, when things are going good, it is hard to move on.

Which of the groups that you participated in was hardest to leave? I was working with the high school marching band. I held the office of band booster president and I was the colorguard instructor. Why? I graduated from this school, and I was in the band. I was a member of the colorguard. I promise myself that if I ever got the chance to give back, I would. I started working with the band in 1997. I was the colorguard instructor. I help 14 young girls learn their routine and prepare for the halftime show in which they marched with the band.  As the years went by, the director left and the band got a new one director, who would become my best friend, big brother, and part of my family. He turned the band around from being student who played instruments, to a group that knew the meaning of team. He change the way the students saw each other and how they saw themselves. The band became a team.

We took a program that was just a program. The students were all over the place. Doing what they wanted to do with not respect to the adults of other teachers who were there to help. The band became one of the top high schools bands on this side of the state. They begin to win contests everywhere they went. The program was solid and those same students caught on to the vision of where this band was going, and they did their part. I move up in rank becoming the band booster president. I had never held such a high position before, but I was on it and did a great job.

 How do you say good bye to something you work so hard for, making sacrifices, and you are so proud of. Something you can say I helped build that. It is hard. I cried. I had some medical issues that would not let me do the things I could do when I first begin working with the band.

What sorts of closing rituals have you experienced or wish you had experienced? At the end of even practice, football game, before a contest, the band and the staff would line up and repeat this ritual, which the drum major or section leader would call it out. It is called EYES WITH PRIDE. It went like this:

DM: Feet Band: together

DM: chest Band: out

DM: shoulder Band: back

DM: elbows Band: froze

DM: EYES Band: WITH PRIDE

DM: EYES Band: WITH PRIDE

DM: EYES Band: WITH PRIDE

How do you imagine that you will adjourn from the group of colleagues you have formed while working on your master's degree in this program? I do not say good bye because I usally have one or two colleagues in the next class. This class will be different thought because some of us will be working on the specialization classes next. I hope that we will be keep in touch through email and who know we may meet at graduation.

Why is adjourning an essential stage of teamwork? Because all things must end.  Sometimes there comes a time when we have to let go. We may work perfect as a team, but I may get on your nerves, just like you are always stepped on mine. They end in order for a new chapter or group to begin.

Sandra

Conflict Management

Last week, my sister-in-law Yolanda and I were talking about our family reunion that was coming up and we got into a disagreement that could have exploded into a big mess if I had not stopped and thought about what we were saying to one another. We begin to disagree on if my niece Jennifer, who is letting her boyfriend live with her and her daughter come to the reunion and bring him along. I disagree with her living arrangements, and Yolanda said I am to old fashion and I need to get with the program. I do not believe in that and definitely not bring him to openly share a room. She tells me (Yolanda) that no one has the right to tell Jennifer whom she can bring to the reunion. This is when we begin to get into it, with me telling her that this child has no respect for herself, and by the way her grandmother is not going to let that happen anyway. She comes back at me about I cannot tell people who the can love or be with. That is true, but I can tell her as my niece how others are talking about her and what she is showing her daughter about life.

Yolanda had clicked into attack mode, getting louder and breathing hard on the phone. I felt at this point neither one of us was going to solve anything by going back and forward.  I told her, you have your opinion and I have mine. There is a right and wrong, but you have the right to believe what you want just as I do as well. She stopped for a few seconds and said that is right. I do have my opinion as you have yours. It is ok to agree to disagree. It is what makes us all individuals. Yes, she said all true and we moved on to something else.

I see the three R’s in my communication with Yolanda as well as using the platinum rule.  I used two of the 12 skills that come to mind from the Conflict Resolution Network (www.crnhq.org.) The Win/Win Approach and the Willingness to Resolve skills because both of us wanted to be right – I win / Yolanda win. The willingness to resolve because someone has to be the bigger person and know when enough is just enough, Did Jennifer bring her boyfriend to the reunion? No, grandma spoke and he stayed home.

Reference 

Conflict Resolution Network. (n.d.). CR kit. Retrieved from http://www.crnhq.org/pages.php?pID=12#skill_1