Conflicts/Disagreements

In implementing teaching strategies, I had a minor conflict with one of my teaching team members. I was doing an observation in the classroom and I noticed that the teacher was drilling the children and using the message board inappropriately. Within our school we implement the HighScope curriculum and nothing that she was doing was HighScope. At the end of the day I asked to speak with the teaching team as a whole. I asked the team to explain why they were implementing a strategy that does not go along with our current curriculum strategy. I the response I received was, "I am a HighScope certified teacher and I was teaching using the HighScope strategies that were taught at my last school."

My first reaction was to just say that what she was doing was far from HighScope, but I remembered the strategies learned about conflict resolutions. I considered using the approach, Listening for the Thirdside, I put myself in the shoes of the person I was speaking with. I had to understand what if this was me sitting in the office of my supervisor. The last thing I want is to make sitting in the office for a conference a negative. I aloud the teacher to speak her mind and explain what she was doing. Afterward I encouraged her to try a different approach and I demonstrated the next day in the classroom so she was able to see the difference and how the children would engage more.

The teaching staff received a better understanding of what I was speaking of an was more receptive to doing something different. The approach I used was not demeaning and it did not make anyone feel unease by their approach, it helped them to explore something different. Afterwards I asked the teaching team to come up with different techniques similar to what I did to change up the activities so the children would not become bored.