WK4: Similarities and differences between my evaluations and other people’s

I asked my coworker who is the lead teacher in the preschool class I am assisting and my husband to evaluate my communication. The scores are below.

 

Person who evaluated--- Communication Anxiety Inventory, Verbal Aggressive Scale, Listening Styles Profile

Me   41, 55, People-oriented

Junko(Japanese)---34, 57, People-oriented

My husband(American)---53, 55, People-oriented

 

The scores are slightly different but the categories I was evaluated into were all the same.

 

I have a mild level of anxiety in communication and communication is not a problem but I have some situation I feel unconfident in (public speaking). I have a moderate level of Verbal Aggressive Scale. I have a good balance of respecting and considering other people’s viewpoints, and arguing fairly without attacking people. As a people-oriented listener, I am empathetic and concerned with others but this may interfere with proper judgment by trusting them too much.

 

The surprising thing is that the evaluations are so similar even though Junko and my husband are form different countries and I have relationships with them in different areas. I had expected to find that people from different cultures perceive my ways of communication differently. It is interesting that I can tell why the scores were a little different. I need to hide and overcome my anxiety towards communication at work and I try to have and show my opinions more clearly at work than at home.

 

One of the insights is that from the similar results from people with different backgrounds, I noticed that I slightly change my ways of communication unconsciously depending on who they are. I believe that we need to pay attention to the changes we make unconsciously.

 

The second insight is that there are many ways of communication that are appropriate. By reading comments that were not applied to me too and found out it is not a right-wrong topic but about styles and preferences. I believe that we can learn from other people and choose to use the styles we do not usually use in certain cases if we think these ways will work better.       

Three Strategies

I think I tend to hide my feelings especially negative feelings such as anger, sadness and frustration more than people from different groups because I do not want other people to feel bad. However, this is not a good thing for effective communication. I also try to say things vaguely because I do not want to sound blunt or bossy. I feel that having these tendencies from Japanese culture and the Japanese language make me ineffective sender of messages here in the US.

I would like to make three changes for better communication. First, I would like to use nonverbal communications intentionally so that listeners will know what I feel and think easily or people won’t misunderstand my actions as displaying indifference to them or their feelings. Second, I would like to say what I want before giving the reasons why I want them because I often feel that that is the way people in dominant culture here communicate and get confused by my approach. Lastly, I would like to imitate ways other people communicate and see the reactions of others for better understanding of different ways of communicating.

WK2: Watching a drama with and without sound

I watched the drama called “Furi-ta- ie wo kau” This title is difficult to translate but it means a person who only have low wage part time job buys a house. When I watched it without sound, I thought I understood their relationships and what kind of topics they were talking about. After I watched it with sound, I found out that I got most of the relationships right even the details like a couple whose relationships are not going well even though they like each other. However, what they were talking about was rarely right and sometimes completely different from what I guessed. One interesting fact is that I didn’t remember some of the short scenes I watched without sound.  

For me the “aha” moment was in recognizing how the non-verbal messages still fit what was going on in the story, even though I had not gotten them right.  This means that we really should avoid acting as if we can understand what someone means with their non-verbal messages alone.  Most of the time knowing why someone is feeling the way they feel is just as important as knowing that they feel that way.

WK1: Good communicator

I think my husband is good at getting mistakes fixed at stores. He talks more professionally than usual and never talks emotionally even when he is really angry. He explains what happens accurately gets the person to confirm what should have been expected and gives reasons why he thinks things are not done properly.  He also focuses the conversation on how the situation can be fixed instead of accusing the person who of not doing the job properly.

 

I would like to model this because he often gets what he wants without upsetting anybody. I think his talking professionally invisibly encourages the listeners to speak and act professionally in return and his not getting emotional and not accusing any particular person puts the listeners on his side and helps them want to help him out.

Professional Hopes and Goals

My hope is to speak about our differences with children and families and show a desire to learn them and appreciate them as a good role model. This might not sound big but I believe that it will have a big impact on children. I have been learning that children are creatures which are naturally disposed to learn and think about what they see in daily life. For example, my daughter made a mouse cage with a running-wheel by arranging her toys creatively:  She used a kitchen pan and a box of blocks.  She did this on the same day my family visited a garage sale where she saw a real mouse cage on sale. I would like to stimulate children’s curiosities for differences and potentials to see them equally in the daily setting.

I would like to contribute to the working environment and classrooms where people talk about differences of us and things people feel are inequity. Since I learned a lot of insights and became aware of issues of diversity, equity, and social justice, I would like to pass them to other people and create opportunities for people to think about these issues.

To my colleagues,

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.

Welcoming Families From Around the World

The country of origin of my imaginary family is Tonga.

Things I will do to prepare myself to be responsive to the family in the childcare setting are following.  

1.       Visit the website of their national tourism guide such as http://www.thekingdomoftonga.com/.

2.       Visit a community of people who are from the country the family us from.

3.       Study about attitudes to education and discipline in Tonga.

4.       Study about religion in Tonga.

5.       Study the language(s) of Tonga and find a person who can work as interpreter if they only speak Tongan, or as a cultural interpreter if they speak Tongan English.

I hope visiting their national tourism website can teach me about their history, political situation and cultures such as food, clothes and festivals. I think I can learn what type of people they are and discover differences and similarities beforehand and hopefully I can get advice from community members who have already experienced a daycare in the US by visiting a community of their people.

I hope these preparations will benefit both of us by lowering the barriers of language difference in both ways, reducing the possibilities of my pushing my values on to them, and helping them to maintain who they are. I think their feeling supported and happy will be the biggest benefit for me.

The Personal Side of Bias, Prejudice, and Oppression

I have heard from some of my friends at play-dates saying we should avoid schools that many Latinos go to. When I heard that first, I didn’t know why so I asked the person the reason. She explained her belief that Latino people have low interests and motivations in education and have dubious morals. This bias diminishes the equity by implying that Latino students are not desirable and influence negatively on other students even though there is no such evidence and it may encourage Latino children to act like that only because other people expect them to do so. When I heard the explanation, I felt that it is not fair for Latino students because I believe there are going to be bad students in any ethnic and cultural group but they are not attributed to their ethnic or cultural groups except in this case.   And it is also weird that non-Latino people who do not really know much about Latino culture decided to label Latino students in this way.

I think the best way to turn this incident into an opportunity is for many Latino students to show their excellence in school. I think this is much easier than before because there are successful bilingual Latino youths and adults who can help younger Latino students. I also think teachers must not have these biases and prejudices against them because biases limit students’ performance levels and other students pick up the microaggressions from their teachers. Another thing we can do is that non-Latino parents can try to get to know Latino parents. I believe that they will find that parents in any culture usually think their children and their children’s education is very important.