Farewell

“The song is ended, but the melody lingers on” –Irving Berlin

As Irving Berlin says, although we may be done this project and almost completed LFS 350, the skills and assets learnt and developed throughout this semester will follow us for the rest of our academic careers. It is a bittersweet feeling to be writing our last group blog of the course. Despite being relieved that our assignment is complete, I think we can all agree that we will miss working with such a fantastic group of individuals. All in all, we have been extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with such an amazing organization and community partner.

What?

Although none of our group members knew each other initially, we all had had the common interest of working with our community partner, The Breakfast Club of Canada. We sought to support their organization in accomplishing their mission of providing nutritious breakfast to students, improving food accessibility of communities, and working in partnership in the creation of sustainable food systems.  Every group dynamic begins a little differently, and having no prior relationship, our group was starting from ground zero. Over the course of the semester we had breakdowns in our communication and we missed deadlines. This lead to frustration, not knowing how to express these challenges.

In addition, our group is extremely diverse, each with unique nationalities and cultures. It has been proven that there are several benefits to working in multicultural groups such as creative problem-solving and creative decision-making (Woods et al, 2011). However, as explained in an article by Katherine Phillips, the anticipation of differences in opinion and perspective due to the recognition of diversity within a group can actually lead to group members working harder to come to a general group consensus (Phillips, 2014). Despite having said that diverse groups have the potential to invoke more challenges within the group dynamic as well as increased debate among decisions, group diversity has been seen to lead to a better and more creative final results. Ensuring that a group functions as a collective is essential for success.

Our moment of significance was during our Week 9 tutorial when we reflected on our emotional experience and attainment of knowledge over the course of the semester, as well as we were provided the space for one another to give feedback. This gave our group the chance to express how we felt, and gave us the opportunity to grow as individuals and as a collective. We were able to eliminate road blocks that stood in the way of our success, by being aware of how others perceive our contribution to the group. We re-aligned on our expectations and roles within the group.

So what?

 Working as a group is powerful because of the different backgrounds, knowledge, and experiences that we each draw on to contribute to our work. Upon receiving our feedback, it was recommended that some members take greater initiative, others be more accepting of questions, and to support our group members using our individual strengths. Working together we were able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of our group, and use them to our advantage to maximize our productivity. Having had the space of feedback initiated through our tutorial, the way we communicated became more succinct. We became more efficient in our work by completing assignments faster. The work we produced was of a higher caliber because we had a better understanding of one another. This resulted in a great response from our community partner, as we had more clarity of our community partner’s goals for the project. To date, we have completed all of our assignments from the Breakfast Club, to a standard  that both our group and community partner are happy with.

As hoped by our group members we are ending this semester having hit the peak of our knowledge and are content with our experience working in the community, achieving our goal of ending on a “high-note”.

Now what?

Our group has gained skills on giving and receiving feedback, communication, and collaboration. These skills are not only valuable in the academic world, they are essential in the workforce. Being able to give and receive feedback is what allows you to grow and support the growth of other individuals. The value of this course is unquantifiable, because of the real world skills that are developed and refined over the course of the semester.
Employers seek post secondary education graduates who are able to contribute and be contributed to.

Moving forward, we hope to keep these skills in practice, and apply them in future academic and work environments that we encounter. Feedback is a difficult skill to master, as it causes you to communicate in a way that may not always be perceived well by peers or colleagues. Through our experience we have seen the value of speaking up and sharing with a team, as it can make monumental changes in all areas of productivity. We are excited to be able to apply the skills learnt from this class in other classes as well as experiences in the future.

Some Final Words:

As a farewell, we would just like to say we have been extremely lucky and fortunate this semester to have been given the opportunity to work with a dedicated and passionate organization and community partner. As this project comes to a close, we all take away of skills and knowledge gained throughout this semester and reflect on how far we’ve come. Despite this being somewhat of an emotional rollercoaster for most of us, we are all excited to end this project on a high and are looking forward to being able to present our project to students in the Nest on Wednesday. We look forward to seeing you there and would love to share with you our excitement towards the work we’ve accomplished this semester. Thank you for joining us on this experience and we hope that you have enjoyed it as much as we have!!

Farewell from the Breakfast Club of Canada Group; Angela,
Mercy, Nika, Claire, Kate & Chloe!

Works Cited

Phillips, K. W. (2014). How Diversity Makes Us Smarter. Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/

Woods, P., Barker, M., & Hibbins, R. (2011). Tapping the benefits of multicultural group work: An exploratory study of postgraduate management students. The International Journal of Management Education, 9(February 2010), 59–70.

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