Ruzal Scott Leon Laureij Communication 101 Assignment #3 April 22, 2009
For this assignment I interviewed my mother, Eileen Ruzal, who has been an elementary school teacher for over 25 years. She has taught the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades in three different school systems in New York City and New Jersey, and she has been recognized several times throughout her career for outstanding performance and contributions. At first, I was slightly hesitant to approach her with my questions, since we rarely discuss the dynamics of her occupation, but as soon as I mentioned the assignment she seemed to take quite an interest in providing me a lengthy description of how communication has played a vital role throughout her career. The first thing she emphasized in our interview was, "Communication doesn't just play a significant role in enabling me to do my job, it IS my job." She then impressed upon me the necessity of physical communication in her line of work as both a tool for trasmitting messages in such a way for children to grasp new concepts and as an organizational adhesive by which faculty and administration are able to maintain the order and decorum needed for such a learning environment to exist. After reading Chapter 13, I understood that communication would play a vital role with regards to the organizational structure of her workplace, but I wanted to learn more about how this structure may have changed over the lengthy period of time she has been teaching. When asked about how changes in communications technology have affected her job as an educator, she immediately mentioned the addition of the computer to the learning environment as the most significant breakthrough in the history of education. Not only did the computer provide educators with a supplementary means through which to assign students independent study, but the internet has provided her to a vast wealth of colleagues from around the world who are teaching similar subjects and material. She often finds herself spending hours online in preparation of a new lesson plan, contrasting the work and lesson plans of other elementary school teachers with her own. Similarly, as an organizational tool, she has instantaneous access to administrative discourse and and school initiatives. She also mentions that if she ever becomes ill the night before work, all she has to do is go online and check off that she will be taking a leave of absence, and a job management system will automatically e-mail the first available substitute with her notes and prepared material for the day. I thanked her for her description of how useful the computer is as a tool for communication and diverted our interview to a discussion of organizational theories. After browsing through the individual theories outlined in the book, she felt that the most adequate depiction of communications role in her workplace was listed under the quality model. Regarding service orientation, my mom said that the greatest priority for faculty and administration was the appeasement students' parents. Parents represent the greatest stakeholders in public education and
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pay the closest attention to the quality of service offered by educators and administration. Furthermore, the quality of leadership is of the utmost importance to how smoothly the rest of the faculty can coordinate their efforts, particularly in terms of school functions that reside outside of the classroom. administration School leaders are chosen by a district's board of education as being exemplary of the quality an educator is expected to display. After skimming over the last few concepts in the quality model, she referenced her explanation of how communication technology has significantly improved the quality of an educator's workplace. Along with the personal computer, she believes that cell phones, projection screens, and televisions have increasingly been adapted for use in the school environment over the last three decades. When asked if communications technology has detracted from the workplace environment in any way, she discussed with me the importance of face to face interaction, and how e-mail, text messaging, and voicemail (which apparently wasn't used until the mid-80's) has taken the place of interpersonal communication. Nowadays, if a student's parents are too busy for a PTC (parent-teacher conference), they will ask my mother if she can video chat over Skype. "It's like talking through a glass window," my mother says, "It just isn't the same." By this point, I had heard enough about the advances of communication technology over the course of her career and instead switched the focus to communication networking functions. My mother began by outlining for me the basic organizational hierarchies of her workplace, which are as follows: BOE (board of education) superintendant, members of the board, school principal, viceprincipal/assistant principal, administrative assistants, department heads, departmental assistants, teachers, parent-teacher association members, parents, and students. In this order, descending from most to least influential in communication, each participant in the organizational hierarchy of a school is encouraged to relay information to the position directly above them. This ensures a flow of information that is consecutively supported by one's superiors until, if any particular action is required, it is addressed by the appropriate rank in the chain of command. Similarly, information may travel in a downward flow as easily as it travels upward. Certain positions in the hierarchy have the ability to altogether skip the chain of command in the downward flow of information, such as when a principle or superintendant might address faculty, parents, or students. Also, these administrative positions have external functions as well when it comes to matters concerning the local media or government. Overall, my mother believes that communication is a continually changing process, and that maybe thirty years from now education will resemble very little of the current state of school organization. She can only imagine a day in which communication technology will become so advanced that physical presence is no longer required, and that students will be able to participate alongside tens of thousands of other students from halfway across the world in a simultaneous classroom setting. "Teaching may one day become an obsolete profession, but education will always play a central role in the development of both children and adults." Looking back on her time spent as an educator now that she is nearing her retirement she says, "I am glad that I have had the opportunity to play an influential role in the lives of hundreds of kids, and I hope that the amount of work I have put into my job might reflect on the future successes of my students."
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