Communication
Evaluation
For my blog this week, I decided to share a portion of my
Assignment 1. I chose two other
individuals to evaluate me using the same three assessments. These people included a family member and
friend/colleague. I found it interesting
that the scores fell in the same moderate range on the Verbal Aggressiveness Scale and Communication
Anxiety Inventory. However, these
individuals evaluated me at an elevated level range (Rubin, Rubin, Graham,
Perse, & Seibold, 2009). This
inventory indicates I feel uncomfortable with anxiety in several communication
contexts. I appreciated learning about
myself through others. I believe they
were able to give impartial feedback. I
may have answered some of the questions in a way I hoped I acted as a
communicator. These outside evaluations
saw me in a deeper light.
It
has taken me years to grow as a communicator.
As a child and young adult, I was extremely shy and avoided positive or
negative confrontations at all costs. As
life progressed, I had to learn to communicate with others in college and in
the business sector. When I returned to
school to obtain my educational degree, I realized how important it was to
learn to deal with children, families, and colleagues. I started to understand it was alright to
talk with others and even have different opinions. From my personal evaluation and the feedback
from others, I have noticed that I still deal with communication issues. Even though I am able to speak to large
groups, I am still very uncomfortable and try to avoid these opportunities. I do better in small groups; however, I still
desire approval and want people to feel comfortable and get along. On the other hand, with maturity comes
wisdom. When a topic deals with the
needs of my students, my own child, my family, or close friends, I seem to rise
to the occasion. I feel strong, opinionated,
and strive to make things right. I don’t
hesitate to stand-up for others or issues that are important to me.
Through
these evaluations, I have considered three goals to help improve my
communication skills. I need to work on
my self-esteem, self-adequacy, and stereotyping of others. My self-esteem may led to a set of attitudes
that people hold about their own emotions, thoughts, abilities, skills,
behavior, and beliefs that fluctuate according to a situation or context
(O’Hair & Wiemann, 2012). My
self-adequacy could lead me to think my communication performances may not be
stellar, but just good enough (O’Hair & Wiemann, 2012). I want to learn to feel more confident and
self-assured. Finally, I need to work on
stereotyping individuals on first impressions.
Stereotyping becomes an act of fitting individuals into an existing
schema without adjusting the schema appropriately; it involves organizing
information about groups of people into categories so that you can generalize
about their behaviors, attitudes, skills, morals, and habits (O’Hair &
Wiemann, 2012). I would like to say that
I am not guilty of stereotyping my students, their families, or other
individuals. However, I try my best not
to assume certain information about others.
Unfortunately, my background knowledge and particular beliefs may
interfere with my flexibility and open-mindedness. Sometimes I meet a child before they are in
my classroom. I may form an inaccurate
first impression of that future student.
I have to be willing to set that initial meeting aside and truly get to
know this child. In the past, I have
found that my thoughts on these encounters are often inaccurate.
In
conclusion, I must work on these goals to become a better educator and
communicator. I want to be a teacher
that advocates for her students and educational community. I must be self-assured and enhance my
communication skills to be proficient personally and professionally within the
early childhood field. This will help me
interact with young children, their families, colleagues, and various community
and government organizations and agencies.
With each new assignment, I learn more about myself and the issues I
need to improve upon. I appreciate this
opportunity.
References
O’Hair,
D., & Wiemann, M. (2012). Real
communication: an introduction.
Perceiving the self and others. Chapter
2, pp. 46-62. New York:
Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Rubin,
R. B., Palmgreen, P., & Sypher, H. E. (Eds.) (2009). Communication
research measures: A sourcebook. New
York: Routledge.
Rubin,
R. B., Rubin, A. M., Graham, E. E., Perse, E. M., & Seibold, D. R. (Eds.)
(2009). Communication research measures II: A sourcebook. New York:
Routledge.
