Journal Question: Give an example of a time when you successfully communicated with another person during this student teaching placement, even when that individual may not have personally liked you or agreed with your point-of-view.

Communication is completely essential when working towards professional development.  It is also very important to have effective communication with students, peers, other teacher, supervisors, and parents.  In my current student teaching placement I have not had any major communication problems, however when I was in my health student teaching placement at Morgantown High School, there were a lot more problems with communication.

            One example during my student teaching placement in which I had to communicate with someone in whom they did not agree with me came during my health student teaching placement.  I was teaching my drugs as medicines chapter and I had a student who completely disagreed with me that prescription medicines were drugs.  However we communicated very effectively, I asked for their reasons why they believed that prescription medicines weren’t drugs and they gave me typical high school answers like: it is legal, a doctor prescribes it, a pharmacist gives it to you, it is a medicine, and a few other generic answers.  I found that it was very important to let them share their answers first, that way I could address each answer they had individually.  This way I could give them a complete and correct answer.  I found out that by communicating that way it helps to better answer the question.  I then proceeded to answer the question with the correct definition of a drug, explained to the student the pattern of prescription misuse, how to identify misuse, abuse, and the effects of prescription misuse and abuse. 

This was a very effective way to communicate with the student who did not agree with me at all.  I allowed them to speak first, listed all of their beliefs out so I could answer them individually and fully, and finally I then proceeded to answer with the correct answer.  I did not start an argument, I did not allow other students to chime in with their answer, and I did not delay my response.  This is a very effective way to communicate with students, peers, supervisors, or anyone else that you need to communicate with.  Allow them to speak, list all points, and then respond by touching base on all points.  It was the way I chose to effectively communicate and I believe it can work for anyone else who tries it.