preview

Positive Group Dynamics Essay

Decent Essays

Positive group dynamics can make a mundane job enjoyable; by contrast, negative group dynamics can make a dream job miserable. Unfortunately I am stuck in the latter situation. I work as a 1:1 special education aide in a classroom with children with severe disabilities. It is a job with a population that I enjoy very much; in fact, it is a job that I thought I would be happy with for a while. At the start of this current school year I was in a different class with children of a higher cognitive ability and while it was okay, I missed my severely involved kids. A few months into the school year I was offered a chance to return to the classroom I enjoyed the previous year and quickly agreed. The teacher was the same, but the other …show more content…

Basically, if J didn’t think of it, it was no good. Even P, who had taught all these kids the previous year, can’t offer a suggestion without being interrupted with a “better idea”. His response to J’s behavior is to think of any reason possible to leave the room.
Berko, Wolvin, Wolvin and Aitken (2016) describe aggressive behavior as behavior in which the goal is to dominate and get your own way. J’s statements about her way as being “they way we do it now” is in line with Berko et. al.’s description of direct aggression (pg.195). She is overly direct and forceful with her opinions in such a way that makes it hard to disagree or even discuss the issue, to the point of her walking out of the room after she states her opinion’s, leaving others with no way to discuss anything. When I first arrived in the classroom, recognizing that I had been out of the room for five months I deferred to J and A’s schedule and routines. I reminded myself that no one like the “new person” to come in and make changes right away. What I was met with in return was a negative response to everything that had been in place for the prior two years I had worked with these same children. I was told that everything had to be changed, and it was “all better” now that J was in charge.
The leader of the group, P, had been new to this particular group of kids the year before, but by the end of the year had a good system in place and was very active in the classroom. This year, he is

Get Access