Communicating Differently

Communication is so complex!  Everyday I find myself in situations where I am communicating differently with different groups of people.  At home I have more of a low-language, but even within in my own family I communicate differently.  I communicate with my grandmother differently than I communicate with my sister.  With my grandmother I communicate with language I would consider as respectful.  I answer with yes ma’am or no ma’am and my voice would be softer.  With my sister I talk loud and use lots of slang (sometimes words that we’ve created ourselves during childhood).  When I am at work I communicate with my supervisor differently than I communicate with my co-workers.  My communication with my co-workers is not as laid back as my communication with my family; however, it’s doesn’t always have a professional tone.  Communication with my co-workers typically falls in the middle of low-language and high language.  Communication with my supervisor is more professional and I would use high language.

Based on what I have learned this week, I believe working on understanding my own nonverbal communication, understanding others nonverbal communication, and respecting the ideas of others  will help me be more effective. 

 

Communcating without Sound

                                                                                                                                                                

The show that I choose to watch is a show that my children watches on the Disney Channel called “Austin & Ally”.  It appeared that the characters had good relationships based on their nonverbal, characters were smiling and two characters hugged.  The interesting thing is, I had no idea what they were talking about, but found myself smiling because they were smiling.  I could tell when someone made an off the wall comment from the expression of the other character’s face.  I assume the characters were good friends trying to help another friend out.  I do believe my assumptions would have been more correct had I have known the show well.  A perfect example of this is my addiction to soap operas.  I could go for a couple of days without watching and still can quickly figure out what’s going on. 

Effective Communicator

The person I believed demonstrates competent communication as a professional is President Obama, in particular his 2008 acceptance speech.  Obama’s speech delivery and nonverbal comes across to me as a strong leader.  I would love to model his confidence, knowledge, and ability to effectively speak under any circumstance. 

Reflection and Thanks

I have learned that it takes a lot to learn about topics in terms of research.  Research must be ethical and contribute to the field in a way that could help others.  This course has helped calm some of my fears about research and I have realized that conducting research is not as simple as one may believe.  I’ve learned that while planning research you must ensure confidentiality and privacy.  Some challenges I encountered was framing my research topic question to fit each research design.  Comments from Dr. Darrah helped me to reflect and guided me in the right direction.  As a result of this course, I have a deeper appreciation for early childhood professionals.  Understanding the field from the standpoint of a researcher, furthers my belief that our profession is much more complex than others may believe.

A special thanks to all of my colleagues!  Your insight not only helped me to gain more information about research but also helped ease some of the fear that I had at the beginning of the course.  Thanks!