Thank You

   I would like to take this time to thank my colleagues throughout this course! I have learned so much from not only the information and resources from the course but from my colleagues. Everyone's personal experiences and insights has helped me to fully understand about communication and collaboration. Hopefully I will get to continue working with a few of you through our specialization courses. To the ones that are going into a different specialization I hope that you all are able to succeed in not only what is left of your Walden education but in your professional goals as well. I am glad to share this educational journey with you all!

Team Development

   During the adjourning stage of team development, it is the time when the team members complete their tasks and say good-bye. I believe that during this stage it is harder to leave some groups than others. A group that would be hard to leave is one where the team members made real connections with one another and even had high performance throughout the project or task. I believe that groups with clear and established norms can be hard to leave because of the high performance situations and the positive interactions through these norms and performances.

   I have been a part of many groups. Some groups were hard to leave while others were very easy. The groups that were the hardest to leave was when I made real connections with the other group members. One group for me that was the hardest to say good-bye was at my last job. I had to leave because I found a better job suited for my family but it was hard for me to leave my co-workers because of the connections that I made. We helped each other greatly professionally and personally and had great team building experiences. Having time to say good-bye was a great ritual that helped me to leave and know that I was making a the right decision. It made me still feel support from others about my decision and that my former co-workers would still be in contact with me.

   Upon leaving my time at Walden University I believe that having the support and knowledge from my other colleagues will help me to feel better about having to say good-bye and prepare me for my future endeavors. Having the time to say good-bye and taking what I have learned can help me in leaving my colleagues that has helped me along the way to gain my master's degree.

Nonviolent Communication and Conflict Management

   One of the most recent conflicts that I have recently had was with one of my colleagues. While the conflict did not result in anger or having a “fight”, I could definitely tell there was some tension because of our two differing viewpoints. During the situation I wanted to change my classroom around and I told my co-teacher my ideas. Since we have to keep a lot of things in mind while rearranging a classroom I decided to ask for some of her input on a few things. She then began to give suggestions that I did not necessarily like but I valued her opinion. It was then time for me to leave for the day and a few hours later my co-teacher called me to inform me that she decided to go ahead and rearrange a few things in the classroom. I became a little annoyed that she went ahead and changed things and we never finalized how the classroom would be rearranged. It was a Friday and since I had no idea as to how she changed the classroom I decided to go ahead and go up on Saturday to change the classroom the way I had intended instead of waiting on Monday. One Monday I explained to her how I just decided to rearrange the entire classroom on Saturday. She did not seem annoyed but I’m sure she felt the same way I did.

   During this conflict it would have been beneficial to use nonviolent communication in this scenario. We should have at some point listened to what each other were saying and try to understand what the other person was saying instead of making decisions without the other person knowing. While we did not have an argument, nonviolent communication would have helped in the tension and bad feelings that we had towards one another. Another strategy that we should have worked through was thinking of solutions to the problem (changing the classroom) instead of saying nothing. Since my co-teacher was giving suggestions that I did not necessarily liked I should have voiced them and she in turn if I suggested something that she was not particularly fond of. I think working through the conflict instead of not truly talking about it has caused tension and annoyance between us at that time. Since this incident I have been trying to be more open to her about what I am trying to say and also respectful to what she is trying to say to me. Learning about better and effective communication skills has helped me to understand how to work through tough conflicts such as this.