A course on communication

Last week I went on a 2 day course along with many other members of staff that i work with at school, we were all mumbling and grumbling about it being smack in the school holidays and it being one of the few days where the sun was shining but well it has to be done.  On arriving at the boardroom at this rather nice hotel we automatically formed into our own groups, there are those im friendly with in work and out and we sat together, and so it was with the other staff,  the tables sat 4 all arranged haphazardly around the room.

In walked the presenter of the meeting  lets call him Mr A, the first thing he did was give everyone a number on the table from 1 to 4, all the 1's had to sit together, the 2's etc, so the end result being we were sat with people we wouldnt normally choose to be sat with, not because there maybe a disike of them but rather i think its natural to gravitate and sit with those we know better.

Should have predicted something like this really as the course was entitled 'Effective positive communication with children' and in order to achieve this there needs to be open effective communication among the staff as well, and one of the big problems highlighted at a staff meeting last year was the lack of communication and consistency between staff.

The first day was very interesting, we didnt touch on any element of communication with children, but rather it was focused on us the staff and expanding on our communication skills with each other, it highlighted something, something that on the closing of that first day we were all quite shocked about...we communicate worse than the children do between each other and there is a high level of judgement of each other..more specifically 'groups'....the groups being the 'old school' teachers, the newly qualified teachers, classroom assistants, key workers that work with specific children (thats my group), teachers assistants, admin, the head and deputy head and the caretaking staff.

Different groups but all under one umbrella.

Its given me pause for thought, i think it has for a lot of us and i learnt a lot about myself as well as other members of staff and its also made me think about how ttwd is similar, how we are all on some level living an alternative lifestyle of some form, but there are different groups, and how we communicate with those different groups, is there judgement?, do we have a tendency to be drawn to those most similar ie in the same group?

Think i shall come back to this.