Christy’s Reflections

this past week we participated in assignment #3, which was facilitation of a group.  We all liked our topic, “How to stop contributing to your boss’s and your own ineffectiveness”.  One of my responsibilities was to summarize the presentation. I feel like i need alot of work presenting up in front of the class, so i wrote out a summry and tried to memorize.  soon i realized what i needed to do was to be comfortable with the information and then i would be more comfortable talking about it. So i practiced presenting to my dog. poor thing, she looked so confused.   When i actually sat down with my group i was go excited about the topic i just jumped right in. I totally forgot to state our purpose, what i wanted to accomplish, etc. My mind just assumed that everyone was thinking like i was. Fortunately, one person questioned me and then i got back on track. so i do not feel that this was not my best accomplishment in this class and i realized i do need more work.  I just need to forgive myself and move on.  I will say that i am happy with myself because i have not waited until the last minute to work on my paper.  thank heavens it is almost finished, which gives me some relief.

Communication!  Can be a wonderful thing if everything goes as planned but, when misunderstood can cause many problems.  My team experienced this problem last week.  On April 13th each team choose what topic they wanted to facilitate on April 27th.  Unfortunately two of my team members were not present that evening but i was not worried because we had already chosen out topic.  So, to follow up I sent the missing team members and email updating them on the missed class and informing them of what to read and what to be prepared to to for the next class.  Upon arrival on April 20th, one team member came prepared to teach the class.  when questioned, he stated this is what he understood the email to say.  the other team member also was confused but took it one step further and called another team member to question this and discovered she only needed to be prepared to discuss the material we were going to present.  this goes to show that it is easy to misunderstand what a person says and we all need to question the information especially if it does not make sense to us.  This was a lesson well learned to all of us but, to the early reflectors it was humorous to see the productive procrastinators be prepared early!!

Last weeks  class was a real thinker!!!  The topic of paradoxes was a difficult one but i thought that the infrareds did an excellent presentation.  The examples that each team member expressed on how they personally understood the idea of paradoxes allowed different opportunities for classmates to relate to.  The infrareds allowed opportunities to ask questions so that if there were questions they could be cleared up.  They also kept a keen eye on us and when we looked confused they questioned us as to our understanding  of the class.  The exercise where we worked in groups to choose one of three topics to compare the paradox helped cement the idea of a paradox..  Even after all this i still would not want to tackle this topic for a presentation!

The other topic, Intergroup Dynamics, was a lot of fun.  The activities we participated in made you stop and think how you interacted with others in your group, and  how you and the  group came to  decisions and consensus. My group did not have any real conflict but discussion and reasoning why we made the choices we did.  Now, I  can see some of the thinigs i am learning in class being used in my ereryday work life.  There are small but important decisions that are made and we must agree upon decision before we can move forward.  This class is helping me guide my workmates in a smoother process without their even being aware of it.  Everyone appears to be happier because even if we do not go with their choice, they have at least had a chance to express their opinion.

The second assigment is now completed! I must admit i was very nervous with the teaching stragety that we chose because i had never participated in a debate. But i do believe that it was successful in achieving our goals.

The 4 screwdrivers chose “power and conflict” as our topic to engage the class in joint discussion and activities. As we met, we decided to use the movie, “Remember the Titians” as the basis for the discussion. Now, what format to use?  One team member strongly favored the debate format.  The other members were very skeptical. We were not familar at all with this style and nervous about pulling this off successfully. Here our group had a small but healthy conflict.  Members questioned how a debate works and how it could be applied to our topic. In the end, an agreement was settled on and we proceeded with developing the debate.  My team is awesome.  Each member is eager to volunteer to take a task and to complete it on time. Thus on the night of the presentation, everything came into place.  The concept of the debate was a little hard to explain the to class, but the participants were eager to try the debate and it was successful.  I think they actually enjoyed it.  I feel that the class as a whole is great! Everyone volunteers quickly, thus making teaching an easier experience.   GO CLASS!!!!!!!