WK8: Thank you & good luck!

Thank you very much for sharing your thoughts. I am always motivated and supported by your diligence and common desire to make the early childhood field a better place for children and families. I hope we will see one another again in future courses and I also wish you good luck in all you do.

WK6: Team

I think high-performing groups are hardest to leave. It is not only because it is working well but also it has a history that makes it a part of my identity. I have always had an important team since I was a child. Some of the teams that were hard to leave were my volleyball team, McDonald’s where I worked while I was in college and a school where I taught as an English teacher. I think they were hard to leave because I had memories of working together for goals and had achieved some of them, and the members grew by helping and learning from each other. Except for the volleyball team, I had parties as a kind of ritual. It is nice to have a ritual to be able to thank teammates and say good-bye to them.

I imagine that adjourning from my colleagues will be hard but also somewhat happy too because I will be sad not to be able to have contacts with them often but I will be glad that they will be thrive as early educational professionals as they wish to. I think adjourning is essential because we need to move onto our next goals. It will benefit the organizations we belong to and help us to grow up.  

WK5: Conflicts

This is a small conflict that happened at work. At the school where I work the art teacher visits the classrooms to teach arts. She brings the stuff she needs to teach. The lead teacher for my class has asked me to watch out for that the art teacher does not take things that belong to the class and to not let her to use them as much as possible.

 

At the first art class of the school year, the children used markers. The art teacher had two big boxes of her own markers, but she put our class markers on the table without asking. I thought it was not what the lead teacher wanted her to do but I did not stop her because her markers were black outside and our markers were white outside. So I thought I would be able to distinguish them and put them back to where they should be at the end of the class because I am the one who does the majority of the cleanup.

 

At the second art class, the lead teacher was around. I put classroom markers on the table because I knew the art teacher wanted to use them again. The lead teacher asked me not to let them use our markers. So, I put them back saying “I see.” However, the art teacher stared to put our markers on the table a minute after that because she was not watching us. The lead teacher told the art teacher, “I do not want your markers and my markers mixed. Mine are white and yours are black. So please do not mix them when putting away.” She also explained the same thing to the children.

 

This experience made me notice that I tried to avoid conflicts even small things. I do not like to show disagreement. The lead teacher’s attitude showed that we can and need to speak out about what we want even in politeness. She gave this as advice too. She also said, if we do not show what we want or what we think, we could get in a trouble even if we are right.