Last Day of School!

I can not believe this time has come and gone. This is just one of my six classes that I am saying goodbye to. This teaching experience has been more than amazing. In this time, I have found and developed a passion for teaching, grown more into who I am and saw somewhat of a future for me in this field. When you teach, you know the material, forward-backward-sideways-upside down, etc. I have had students question why this theory is like it is, why the book talks about certain material and disagreements in its usefulness.

Through all this, I learned and loved. Instilling my knowledge of communication into these students has been a very rewarding experience. Our classroom discussions were not only how I planned but sometimes even better than I could have imagined. The overall key is preparation, confidence and people skills. Each one of these tools is just as crucial as the other one.  I have greatly enjoyed this chapter of my life and look forward to the next one.

Such a proud teacher

Recently my students at NOVA just gave a huge presentation for class. All I have to say is 'wow.' What a great job by them! It was one of those moments where they did exactly what I asked them to do. Of course not every group/person was awesome, but for the sake of this post, I choose to focus on the great ones!

We are heading into the 7th week at NOVA and the 5th at GMU. My GMU classes have a lot of great discussion. It's exciting because once they don what I ask them, and they excel at it-I can push them. Push them farther than the normal. You remember those classes in college that you actually got something out of?!? Yeah, those few and far between ones that are applicable. That is what I strive for mine to be every single day.

It gives great encouragement when I have a student say to me, "This my favorite class," or "I really think you are an awesome teacher." All I can say is, I love my job!

Welcome BACK!!!

So I am venturing my 2nd week at GMU and my 4th week at NOVA. We are flying back into the swing of things. This semester I am teaching six classes and this term I have to teach everyday. Tuesday and Thursday I only have one class-so if I just wanted to teach five, I could have had those two days off again, but I thought I could teach them. So far, so good.

Last post of the semester..which also means..

This is the last time I will see my students as their teacher! WOW! Time has flown by the past five months and I have learned so much. I am giving my final exams today and as one student was turning in his test, he gave me a card. When I opened it, all it said was:

That is all it really needed to say I suppose. Now this student would not be the student I would have thought would have done this-or even felt like this for that matter! I am still blown away and I'm pretty sure I'll keep this card forever (now that I have it saved on my computer) just as a reminder of much teachers have the ability to influence.

I am so grateful for the opportunity that I have been given to teach at George Mason and NOVA this fall. It has allowed me to grow, not only in my area of study, but overall as a person.

Text Message and Gender Differences

Since the book I use briefly talks about gender differences in Communication, I decided to take it a step further. Here's a couple of points that inspired this lesson:

• Research shows that the differences in men and women’s communication has more to do with why we communicate rather than how.
-Men tend to talk to accomplish something or complete a task.
-Women often use conversation to establish and maintain relationships.
• Men view the purpose of communication as primarily information exchange. You talk when you have something to say.
• Women use communication for the purpose of relating or connecting to others-to know them and be known by them. Talking implies a relationship.
**The main reason we are different are in the motivations or reasons for communicating-the how may not be different, but the why may be.
(Beebe & Beebe, 2011, p. 143-144)

These points alone are enough to get most individuals thinking about how easily miscommunication occurs; when applying all this to text messages, it just could get even more messy! Therefore, we did a class activity. Ladies were on one side of the room, and men on the other.
We defined:
*Texting Rules
*When it is ok for either party to initiate text
*What certain text content translates to each party.

I have to say, it was quite interesting. What I have found is that guys say they text for an actual reason-to see action. The majority of the time, they want to hang out or make a plan to. In addition, my students say they are very annoyed by abbreviations ( like u instead of you or, brb instead of be right back) when you could just write the entire thing since most phones have a keyboard.

It's my Monday-and Friday!!!

This morning I decided to get in the Thanksgiving mood and buy my first class Duncan Donuts. They loved it! We worked on resumes and I told them that we would finish them next week.

I really, really enjoy my job. I love seeing direct impact in their lives; not only in the scholarly realm, but in the everyday realm. I enjoy when students trust me enough to open up and discuss things that they are going through. I had a student tell me the other day, "You trust us, and we trust you."


In addition to teaching them all kinds of amazing Communication theories and phenomenons-I get really listen to them. One thing you will learn in Communication is that most people just need someone to listen to them-whether they are

de-stressing, want someone to be excited with them or just need to talk after a long day; your job is to listen.

If they self-disclose information to you-it is your job to actually take interest and show good listening skills (good non verbals, good feedback and adapted messages that are tailored to what they just said). Sometimes it is not always when we would like it to be time-wise, but the fact is that you are someone they trust.

Good feedback!

Praise the Lord for a job! I go to work and still love it. I don't dread it, I thoroughly have joy from it! I feel like since I love it, it's not work-and that has been the goal in all my education. My dad always said, "If you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life." Therefore, I decided to major in what I love to do-as opposed to what will make me the most money-and I just went for it.

FYI-I had to be kind of quiet in my video because I was in the library and no one else was talking-BUT I wanted to update you all so I did it anyways! Enjoy!