Personal Reflection And Continuous Communication

I consider myself someone who values the question “why?”. My entire life I have caught myself questioning things that others never really seemed to care to think about, about a multitude of subjects. Specifically, asking those close to me like my parents, siblings, friends, and now my husband. Leaning this semester about Psychology has been very interesting to me because it had helped me understand the “why” behind the way the brain works. In this class, Lifespan Growth and Development, I have learned about concepts that I will be able to carry with me throughout my college education, my professional career, my marriage, and my eventual parenthood as a mother.

Students are entitled to an authentic learning experience, where the teacher is encouraging them to identify their own understanding of a concept or problem and “create” their own solutions. They are also learning through experience, “learning by doing”, in addition to connecting their learning to previous knowledge, they are developing a deeper understanding. (Vygotsky)

An example of when I displayed resilience was when I was assigned a unit as a hospital volunteer and took on different roles that what I anticipated. My supervisor was on maternity leave for the duration of my rotation, so I was placed at the nurses’ station to aid them with tasks as needed. The difficulty I had in this role was the ambiguity when I came for my shifts and feelings of being a burden to the staff by not having designated tasks. Rather than continue these negative thoughts, I came up with a new strategy to be of help by reducing the staff’s workloads or prepping paperwork in advance to allow them more time to focus on the patients. Additionally, I sought feedback on areas I could improve on to not only help the unit staff, but also patients and their visitors. These tactics are similar to what we discussed in class pertaining to developing our growth mindset. By enforcing these strategies, I was able to contribute to a more positive and rewarding atmosphere during my shifts with everyone I met.

As this semester is about to come to an end there has been so much enlightening information that I have learned throughout this semester taking psychology. There has been a few chapters that have really stuck with me and have intrigued me to write about.

“Be who you are and say what you feel because people who mind don't matter, and people who matter don't mind.” (Seuss, 1938) Communication is an ever growing skill which comes from many life experiences within many people, including me. I come from a Hispanic culture which is known for being vibrant and expressive within their communication. After being an only child for twelve years, my family and I welcomed a baby sister. This event was an exciting and happy time for my family and I; but it was, of course, met with some changes and adjustments. My sister and I have two different personalities, I am more reserved and cautious and she is outgoing and adventurous. Yet, my sister and I benefit each other in that she helped me become more outgoing and I provide some cautious direction to her adventures. Also, I am a Christian and have been raised in a faith-following family my whole life. Within our line of faith, we are taught to have a kind, gentle spirit and to have common human decency and love towards others. Many factors played a part into what kind of a communicator I am today; my life experiences and culture will play a lead role within my self-assessment of my communication strengths and weaknesses.

1. Recently, a series of harsh conversations and disagreements have caused me to develop a very negative opinion of my manager and our relationship. Though we have also had positive interactions and have accomplished a great deal together, these negative meetings really stick front of mind. If I force myself to step back and consider the larger pattern over the past year and a half of working together, it is clear that he is a nice guy who cares about my development and wellbeing. I realize when I simmer down that he is critical of my work because he truly wants to prepare me for more responsibility, but it is hard to realize this when receiving extremely critical or blunt feedback. I definitely sulk for too long after negative conversations or missteps in our relationship, and in doing so, allow them to overshadow other times when he has been extremely supportive of my ideas and encouraging of my work. To combat this bias, I created a new “kudos” folder in my email. Each time I receive an encouraging message or note from him, I save it in that folder so I can reference the list after rough meetings where we may butt heads. Thus far, I believe this method is beginning to help me stay balanced by reminding me that my manager is pretty supportive, which should help me feel better about where I am at work.

When I spoke with Sheena you immediately noticed that she has been involved in several years of college and work ethic. The outfit she picked out shows that business and professional work is what she is into. Her voice was mellow and smooth throughout the conversation and had thorough answers. Her word choice matched her age and personality. Through the whole conversation she was comfortable with answering the questions.

In the summer of 2017, I chose to partake in Macro Economics to expand my knowledge. Indeed, I got the opportunity to learn what the class was all about. Most of the data that was given included taxes, supply, demand, and income among other definitions. Additionally, I was informed about the basic information of economics, which opened the door to economics as a whole.

Today I worked with Level C again. During my last class, I found out that each week the lessons focus on different topics. This week’s topic is communication. For this lesson the teacher decided on phone calls for different purposes such as booking appointments, inviting someone, accepting or declining invitations, etc. as well as the non-interactive aspect of modern communication like leaving a voicemail. She wanted to do a simulation exercise. As usual, she started with giving them some vocabulary words. The students were then divided into pairs and given some handouts with instructions. There were six pairs. Each pair was to create phone conversations based on the situations listed in the handouts. They would later be called in front of the class where the teacher would pick a situation from the list and they had to act it out. To demonstrate what we wanted them to do, the teacher and I did one of the exercises. We sat with our backs to each other and acted out a phone conversation. Then we moved around the class helping the students understand the background that was given for each situation and to find the right words that they wanted to use. We corrected their grammar and pronunciation along the way. We let the students perform the first few exercises sitting in their own seats to make them comfortable, but for the last six situations, they came in front of the class to perform. They found it very funny when I made the ringing sound for the first pair, but then they

To begin I introduced the learning intentions at the start of the lesson. Students were extremely responsive to this. Tim commented that chemistry was less ambiguous as he knew what the purpose was and what each class’ purpose was (Appendix P). Tim preferred when learning intentions were introduced at the beginning encouraging him to engage as he saw its purpose and how it connected with his life. For Mark, it gave him a purpose and he could understand the importance of each lesson (Appendix P). John enjoyed when learning intentions were discussed in the conclusion as it was an individual interpretation of what was important in the lesson (Appendix P). With all three students, I observed a greater level of engagement in class, especially during discussion around the learning intention. It allowed the lessons to look more closely at real-life context, which I think is extremely important, and this class discussions led. Utilising a sheet with learning intentions, students wrote what they knew at the start of the lesson and what they knew at the end (Appendix Q). This was an extremely valuable piece of formative assessment as it gave a direction for my next lesson, depending on what the students had learnt, and where there were still areas that could be covered in more depth. The class were more engaged in the learning and had more enjoyment and focus during lessons where the expectations of their learning were discussed. Students know their expectations and the purpose of

I have attended all fifteen sessions for the duration of this semester. The only session that we got dismissed due the air quality issue from the fire in Sonoma County. My comprehensive way to keep track of attendance record is written on my calendar. In addition, I would have contacted my peers to take down the necessary notes that I missed.

I started my lesson off by allowing the students to shake their wiggles out. This helps them stay focused on the lesson. We meet after lunch so they are usually tired and ready to go home. After, we did that I asked them to look over their push/pull charts from the previous day. I told them to reflect on the lesson (interactive PowerPoint) from yesterday and to think about their opinions they developed. I gave them one to two minutes to reflect and turn and talk to their neighbor. As they talked I went around to listen in on the pairs to make sure their conversations were on task. After the two minutes were up I asked each pair to raise their hand if they were finished discussing their opinions. I allowed several pairs to share their opinions. I also asked the groups to provide two reasons to support their opinion. I restated some of their answers to make sure they were providing two reasons. I also did that to allow other pairs to possibly learn new reasons to support their opinion. After, three pairs shared I asked the class “what is an opinion?” I let two people in the class share their answer and then I restated their answer. Next, I asked them “why do opinions have to be supported by reasons?” I called on one student to share their answer. I told the class to think about what we said yesterday. After, I explained why opinions had to be supported by reasons I informed the class that today we will be constructing an opinion piece. I asked the class if they had ever

Throughout class, we absorb each combination as a whole in order to grasp the main idea and main goal from each concept. We then, break it down step by step and work to redefine each part. From here, majority of the time, we repeat and repeat it. In the readings, deep practice does best when we work with repetition, however only for a certain amount of time. Sometimes it’s even best to take baby steps when practicing. By breaking things down, we allow for our brains to absorb each concept that will later translate into muscle memory, therefore making it easier for us to recall these skills because our body has been practicing the feelings over and over again.

Throughout the course of the semester I have learned a variety of things about psychology. I have learned about the founding father of psychology Wilhelm Wundt, various theories and case studies, coping mechanisms, and stressors. After going through each of the sections this semester, I have learned quite a few ways to utilize psychology in my personal life, professional life and academic career, in a way that is beneficial to me and progressive to my future.

It is important to pay attention the situation when writing an e-mail to someone. After you sent it, you cannot get it back to fix it. E-mail is a great way to get the message across when I need to share information to a large number of people quickly and if people are hard to reach with the phone. As well as, when I need a written record of the communication with someone to follow up afterward. “Misspelling of individual words or grammatical error involving misplacement or incorrect word choices in a sentence, can create confusion, lose meaning, and have a negative impact on the reception of your document” (University of Minnesota Libraries Publishing [UMLP], 2010, para. 1). Depending on my audience my writing styles will change, for example, if I am writing to the reader in my organization will be less formal compared to writing an e-mail to outside organization, vendors, or clients. Based on the internal communication versus external communication as well as the situation will change my writing styles.