Team Development: The Adjourning Stage

I imagine that I will have adjourned from the many groups of colleagues while working on my master’s degree in this program. We all have come together to understand an important component and contributor to the field of early childhood education. We have shared our different paradigms and have further shaped our own. We have also opened doors to future communication past this course, if desired. Effective communication is what is needed to be able to become responsive to the needs of diverse children and their families. I feel that adjourning is an essential stage when working in teams because every member has the chance to elaborate on their part in completing the task. I have grouped with many people when completing tasks and have experienced that the adjourning stage allows people to open up and express their social identities past the task at hand. I have built relationships with people that I have been assigned to work with. I met my husband during the adjourning stage. I visited a church in Lagos, Nigeria with missionaries from the States in 2012. After the events were over, we had the opportunity to reflect on what occurred that day and we began to enjoy each other’s conversation. Yes, it was hard to leave, but I am thankful for this stage of development. I think that it is important to implement the five stages of team development when collaborating with others. It gives everyone the opportunity to come together and communicate towards a positive cause and could possibly build relationships. Reference: O'Hair & Wiemann. (2012). Real Communication: An Introduction

Conflicts

I have had many conflicts where I work. I will admit that having the ability to shape who I am has helped me to deal with the conflicts better. I am employed in a low income community of predominately Black children and I become frustrated because their development is viewed to be elusive. I advocate for children and hope that teachers have positive thoughts about children and their future and not speak of negative thoughts about children and their families. One conflict that I have is the fact that our young children need to fully be understood before we can say that they are failures; for we have no clue as to how their home environment is. Many of the students that I work with have to help their parents financially and/or have issues with maintaining a functional family. We have to understand that children will bring their stressors to school and act on them. It is our responsibility as educators to identify anything that will harm children’s development and look past viewing them as future investments. I find that many of my colleagues are struggling with following the written curriculum and are becoming burnt out with the behaviors of children. Well, I feel that there will continue to be negative behaviors until teachers learn ways to alter or modify the curriculum to fit the needs of individual children. I am often told that the written curriculum is challenging enough and that teachers don’t receive the support that they need to help to close the gap of children falling behind in their development. Individuals learn at their own pace and we as educators need to embrace their differences in order to create effective teaching. I will continue to research for ways to promote effective communication. I will also continue to research the issues of laws and curriculum set forth by policy makers for our future. I often think of how could diverse groups be identified and respected when guidelines that are written complicate current issues of diversity. I personally think that issues begin with some of the guidelines that are put in place for others to follow. I think that there is a need for many guidelines to be revised due to the changing times of our society. How are we fostering positive development for young children and families, if we do not fully understand them? How can we help assist individual needs?