So much is involved with communication, and I'll be the first to say that, as much as I work at it, I often fail at it. The trouble with communication, at least for me, lies in the fact that it isn't just about giving communication (saying the right thing, timing, tone of voice, wording, etc.), but also about receiving it. Listening, being available, being visibly receptive, and being actively involved are all hugely important to the person giving that information.
Recently I have been team-teaching with the other English teacher in the high school where I work. I won't go into depth about our relationship, but just a little bit of background: we started out as headed towards good friendship, I became close with some other folks that she is not friends with, it got a little awkward (as if I needed to choose sides??), we lost some closeness, but we are still friends.
Anyway, team teaching can be quite effective, and actually very cool for both teachers and students. It requires, however, a great amount of communication. I had been very frustrated with the direction our lessons seemed to be going, and I was frustrated in general with my other classes (we only co-teach one class), feeling as though I was not giving ample time to both reading and writing, not to mention I was feeling as though she was not contributing to the teaching, AND I was frustrated because her contributions took place mostly around the morning of our class. Personally, I like to be prepared the night before at least, but I don't want to be the only one doing anything.
I've been trying to get us to plan on the weekends for the whole week, or call the night before at the latest to get some planning in, but until this afternoon, it seemed to be futile attempts. Finally, today after school, we actually sat down and began making plans. During our planning I mentioned my struggles (again) with fitting in both reading and writing in just 4 hours a week - since we are in a completely standards based system, there are standards for both reading and writing, and I just don't always know how to fit all that instructional time in. She is a bit more experienced, and so she will say things like, "Oh, really? I'm not having trouble at all in my other class." But then she won't tell me how that is... I guess I need to also ASK, rather than just EXPECT her to give me the answers, right? Anyway, I was proposing a different kind of schedule, one that me and another teacher had made (just as a suggestion, not set in stone), and so she began talking about the pros and cons of that in detail.
Here is where my problem begins. I am not an auditory learner as it is. When I do listen, usually I make extreme effort to listen intently. Sometimes when I listen intently, I need to be doing something, or perhaps my whole body doesn't suggest it (I'm more of a visual and kinesthetic learner), but the truth of the matter is, I'm just thinking so much and listening all at the same time that... I don't know what happens. So as we continue planning, she mentions that our lessons, while good and in depth, have been focusing so much on reading, and our problem is that we haven't given enough time to writing. I'm like, "Exactly. That's what I'm saying." So then she says something along the lines of, "If it were me, we would have done it this way..."
So, we've been team-teaching for at least a semester in length - why this is just now coming up, I have no idea. So I say, "Well I wish you had said something earlier..." And then it began. The discussion I have wanted, avoided, dreaded, hoped for, all of the above, it was opened.
"It's not that," she began, "I'm intimidated by you... You just have such a strong personality, and it's not so much that, but you like things the way you like them, and..." and so on and so forth. So, I'm dominating, I'm demanding, I have a strong personality, and my response is an explanation to her.
"I really am listening!!" I explain my fault. "And I have a tendency to present myself as more confident than I really am." And then I apologized incessantly, still frustrated that it had taken this long to get anything out of her. "I value your opinion," I said. "I really do. But I can't value it if you don't tell me."
And then?? We actually came up with solutions and actually TEAM PLANNED our coming lessons!! So, once again, communication has solved all the world's ills. Or at least, this small world's ill.
The moral of the story? There are two, I suppose. One, be a better listener. Make your speaker believe that you are listening. And two, if you are in a group or on a team and you have an opinion or something to add, freaking add it. Because no one will be able to agree with you or disagree with you or build off of it if you keep quiet - give people a chance. The world isn't as scary as we all think, I think, because most people are just as scared as you are. So there's my two cents on the matter.
I feel as though my blogs aren't nearly as earth-shattering as some of the great ones I've been reading... maybe I need to make my world bigger than my job. You think?? ;)
