THANK YOU...  

TO ALL OF MY COLLEAGUES FOR YOUR

REFLECTIVE COMMENTS,

QUESTIONS,

STORIES AND RESEARCH

YOU HAVE TRULY MADE THIS EXPERIENCE

 A POSITIVELY MEANINGFUL ONE!!!

GOD BLESS YOU all AS YOU MOVE FORWARD

TOWARDS YOUR SPECIALIZATION  

AND PLEASE KEEP IN TOUCH,

Charlene....

(charlene.carroll@waldenu.edu)

Team Development – The Adjourning Phase

The group which made for the hardest good-bye for me recently was the one I felt the greatest connection with. Basically, we were all different. Everyone attending the training for example, had various levels of education and years of work experience. We had come from different backgrounds and different locations but we also connected as well. We were all center directors working in Philadelphia county and were all committed to the task of learning the best practices we needed to increase literacy in the classrooms of our various Philadelphia Head Start locations.

After introductions were made, as part of the Forming stage of team development, we eagerly entered the Storming stage by settling down into our repetitious role of reading, learning, practicing, teaching the teachers at our centers, journaling the experience and meeting again at the next session to share our experience in large group, respond and list insights before starting the process over again with a new strategy and teach. This process continued for ten long weeks until the final task was completed and the end of both the Norming and Performing stages were finished. It was at this time, I believe the Adjourning stage had begun--it was the last day of training and I realized just how effective our teams had been. We were summarizing our center achievements with the facilitators when I realized that I knew many of the director’s first names who were speaking. I knew many of their center names. I remembered many of the issues and problems we had all helped each other solve while in training and I exchanged cell numbers with those I felt I had some particular things in common with before I said my final goodbyes.

 Had I not gotten the cell phone numbers of those I wanted to continue to keep in touch with, I may have felt sadness at the Adjourning stage instead, I felt energized and excited that I had made some professional ties that I believe are excellent resources in the field and I look forward to keeping communication open with them to discuss issues and problems that I can glean ideas from. I believe it is these types of relationship building, high performance teams that are the most effective and most productive and they are not the hardest to leave because people, like myself, come away from the team connected with people with real industry experience helping other people in the field. It is these types of high performing teams that have the clearest norming and performing stages and get things done. These types of teams are able to focus on the issues and problems at hand rather than the differences of the team members, for example. These types of teams can be the most effective at the Adjourning stage because they are the ones that can continue the connections with the people who are on the front lines and have real-time experience by phone and by email after the Adjourning time is over. This is why I don’t believe I will have a difficult time saying goodbye to my colleagues at the end of my program at Walden because I feel I will be able to continue communicating with them by phone or email and being able to gather phone numbers and emails to continue relationships already established is what makes the Adjourning stage essential.

Reference

Abudi, G. (2010). The five stages of team development: A case study. Retrieved

from http://www.projectsmart.co.uk/the-five-stages-of-team-development-a-case-study.html

About  a month ago, I was in a conflict with a preschool teacher over how to make the classroom centers in her classroom more defined. According to the program specialist, that the administration team hired to help this teacher redesign her classroom for the ECERS-3, one center needed to be separated into two distinct areas and two centers had to be switched.

The teacher however, did not agree. I met with her a few times and specifically asked her to make the switch and separate the one center. I gave her a deadline of a week and asked her if she needed help. She emphatically she did not want help. I waited after the deadline. The centers remained the same and so, I asked her to meet me in the conference room. When she arrived, I asked her why the task had not been done and she said something rude and walked out.

I documented the result of my meeting and asked my supervisor to meet with both of us to get this task completed. At the next meeting with my supervisor, the teacher had invited the executive director to sit in and so, we had 3 administrators in the meeting, plus the teacher and I copied the latest documentation for everyone, including the teacher to read.

After everything was said and done, the teacher was given until the end of the day to complete the original task of redefining the centers. My supervisor was also asked to order a larger cabinet for the teacher’s art materials.

As The Center for Nonvioldent Communication model suggests, I felt the communication break down  between myself and the teacher could have been avoided if the teacher had been more honest in expressing her classroom needs because in the end, she still had to complete the tasks that were originally assigned by the end of the day and she did. She did however, also gain another, larger cabinet to hold all of her art suppliesfor her classroom — a request, she said she asked my supervisor to order for her earlier, but had not received a reply. I however, had no knowledge of this request  but felt my overall communication was effective.    

Reference

The Center for Nonviolent Communication. (n.d.). The center for nonviolent communication.

Retrieved from http://www.cnvc.org/