Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/stop-refereeing-and-start-building-communication-skills/5016706/
Your lead preschool teacher, Tomar, tells you that the new assistant teacher in his classroom, Tania, isn’t doing a very good job of cleaning up after snack and lunch.Chris is grumbling in the staff room. Mia left exploded food in the microwave again; and Chris, who has lunch after her every day, has to clean it up again.
The storage closet is a disaster, again. You spent an entire day separating and organizing the different blocks and manipulatives into their correct containers, wiping up paint and glue spills, and cleaning up the piles of paper. Now, a few days later, it looks like a tornado hit it. Everybody is blaming everyone else for the mess.
Helping staff get along with each other can sometimes be more challenging than helping young children get along! A director can feel like a referee instead of a leader of professionals when staff bicker with each other. Many directors find that efforts made to strengthen everyone’s skills in giving and responding to feedback help a great deal.
Early childhood training calendars are filled with opportunities to learn how to teach children to use their words with each other and manage their conflicts. As early childhood educators, we ...