Collaborative Collaboration Reflection

I approach collaboration as a team player, and I believe students need more than one person to guide them to their full educational potential. Also, active and prepared participation of weekly PLC meetings with the teachers of my special education students to plan collaborative curriculum have increased results in math and reading substantially. Participating in co-teaching furthers my repertoire of knowledge to assist my students. I have learned a vast amount from sharing and consulting with colleagues regarding students, observing mentoring teachers, and planning activities to ensure growth in students.

I am going to be looking at and discussing how to improve on my own and team practice. Within this, I will be discussing why it is important to continue with my professional development and why team work is important in schools. I will also be describing why it is important to be respectful of the skills and expertise that others can bring to the team.

This past year taught me about the ups and downs of how to integrate myself into a new staff. As the year began I set up meetings to have with staff members to see what my involvement would be within ministries. I had a mix result with the meetings. I had a great meeting with the pastor, as well as, other administrative staff members. When it came to the co-workers in charge of ministries, the results of the meetings were not as reassuring and I left with confusion, after going in with much excitement. These meetings, in a way, foreshadowed what was to come, in regards to communication and collaboration with the ministry leads at Holy Family.

Collaboration within groups allows individuals to use their own specific ideas and own talents to succeed when they needed it the most. When succeeding in a collaborative environment an individual gains the ability of communication that is growing in the world today. The school system used to be completely individual based with little to no feel of a collaborative environment. However, schools are now beginning to understand the benefits of losing the standard approach to school and is now leading the world to a collaborative environment. While working in a collaborative environment the members of these groups usually gain insight on what they are effective at and what they are no effective at.

In this essay I am going to reflect on my experience working as part of a team and the preparation on an oral presentation I had to do in class with people from different courses, as part of the Foundations for Practice in Health and Social Care module. Reflection is educational and is used as a means of self-knowledge and to develop using a process of feeling and learning by thinking about what happened and what could have been done differently. (Rolfe, 2011, p.8-12) I will be using the Gibbs (1988) Reflective Cycle to do this. In this model there are 6 different stages to look at to help structure reflection, the description of the event, your feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and an action plan. There is more than one model

During this trimester, I was a member of two diverse five member groups. Superficial analysis based on composition and output (successful assignment submission) would suggest that these groups had every opportunity to succeed and evolve into effective teams (Fisher, Hunter and Macrosson 1997; Hackman 1998). However, closer inspection suggests otherwise. As Hackman (2004) recommends, teams should measure effectiveness from multiple perspectives: quality of team outcomes (client perspective), quality of team life (individual perspective), and increased team productivity over time (team perspective). Using this model, it is apparent that despite a happy client, both teams performed poorly.

1- What role did you play in team meetings or discussions (online or face-to-face)? What ideas or. work did you contribute? Consider your verbal (vocal or written tone, etc.) and nonverbal communication (body language, facial expressions, etc).

In the grief support group I co-lead with a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor (LPCC) and supervised by a Master of Social Work I learned how to facilitate a meeting. The LPCC taught me the person-centered approach and the social worker taught me to monitor client’s progression of goals. She allowed me to take lead, to link members together by similarities they share, and to give members homework. The LPCC believed in self-disclosure, she demonstrated this for me in a fantastic manner the social worker I was with did as well. Teaching me that it is great to self-disclose when appropriate and when it will benefit the progression of the group or for them to feel comfortable trusting the leader. In my group sessions I did not deem self-disclosure appropriate to use. How I will translate this is to be aware of my clients, to ask them what goals they hope to achieve, and for them to keep journals of progress. I will create a safe atmosphere for clients to speak, provide affirmation, and help clients set and maintain goals.

Teamwork can be complex and challenging given task and interpersonal issues, level of group motivation and expected performance standards. The concrete experience spoken about in this reflection piece is in reference to the effectiveness of myself as a group member and the group, working to write a report outlining the organisation and structure of Volkswagen. Dennison (2009) applies Kolb’s learning cycle (1981, 1984) which suggests that learning moves through a continuous cycle, between having an experience, and then reflecting on that action. This cycle has been developed from Lewin’s (1951) model for experiential learning. Reflection termed by Boud, Keogh and Walker (1985) ‘is a forum of response to the learner to experience’(p. 18). On reflection, the early set group dynamics was a defining factor in the experience, and how the team conducted themselves throughout the task. Meyerson, Wick and Kramer (1996) note that ‘such rapidly converging groups require methods for developing “swift trust”’ (p. 8), which can explain why initial group dynamics are so important. I took on multiple team roles, including group leader, which could be translated into the team not performing collectively on a high level, however, I could view this as a personal ineffectiveness of my leadership style.

To further understand Belbin Team Role Theory, I, together with four students formed a team and simulated as being authorized by the Songjiang Government Bureau to investigate into the current situation and the prospect of the higher education industry in Songjiang District. Through unremitting team efforts, we successfully demonstrated our findings and recommended several ideas via a formal presentation. Reviewing the three-months-long process of cooperation, I really found this experience of learning meaningful and fruitful. This reflective essay is a conclusion of my sympathetic introspection of the

At initial of spring semester, Professor Nola Schmidt made groups in research method for evidence based practice (NUR 670) for paper and homework. After she made groups, I sent her email about change my partner in the group at the same day. However, she did not respond my email at that time. I was not comfortable when she said, " you will work with Jalal for homework and paper" because I knew him already, and we worked in the same hospital in my country. I told Professor, I want to work with domestic students or Indian students because they might have different ideas and knowledge about nursing, but she did not answer my email. In fact, I hoped to be alone to make paper after the Professor did not change the group. I knew my grade on the exam

In my undergraduate work, almost all of my classes that were directly related to my major required at the least one group project. In the beginning this was not something I was very fond of mostly because I had some bad experiences when it came to working with others on projects. Usually it was the problem of people not pulling their own weight, and doing their parts to help with the tasks. When it came time to have the assignment complete it was even harder to give a grade to those people. I did not want to be the guy who caused someone to throw someone under the bus. However, after I thought about it, I did want to be that guy because in the real world on a work project if there was someone who did not pull their weight in the job projects would not be successful. So, when it came time for grades, I was always honest, and usually if a person did not do their part I told it how it was.

The Roundtable Discussion was successful because we all shared our articles and covered all the content we brought. We shared our idea and expressed our opinions about the articles for the topic that we chose which was serial killers. We asked many questions and talked for the whole lunch period.

“Through collaboration, ideas can be shared, new and better strategies can be developed, problems can be solved, students’ progresses can be better monitored, and their outcomes are evaluated effectively.”¬ (Lee, 1996).

After completing the self-assessment for module #2, I was a bit surprised to discover I scored 40% in directive supervision and 40% in nondirective supervision. Before completing this assessment I thought for sure I would score higher in collaborative supervision. However, after learning more about Glickman’s supervisory approaches, I quickly realized that my definition of collaborative supervision was not accurate. I thought collaborative supervision was one size fits all. I believed teachers needed and wanted reflective problem solving with the goal of working together to figure out a solution. What I didn’t take into consideration is where the teacher was in their personal and professional development. It makes sense to me now how collaborative