TEACHING KIDS

Describe the task *

In detail, what was the aim of the task? How many teams? What was the team dynamic?
Timings? Rules & restrictions?
During our trip to laos we had stayed in a local lao village for 2 nights to experience a different
kind of lifestyle that we dont see or experience in our everyday lives living in Hong Kong. We
were all given the task to go off into teams, and teach a class. I had chosen and gathered a
team, me and 3 other good friends who were on the trip with me. We had the opportunity to
teach a class and interact with the students for an hour whilst taking a break from our practical
work which was building classrooms for the school we were in. We didnt have any instructions
and basically just had the freedom to teach the kids whatever we wanted, keeping in mind the
large language barrier between us and them as they dont speak english and we dont speak
any lao. 3 other teams of 4 boys and 4 more girls had the opportunity to do this, but in different
classrooms at different times. The team dynamic was really amazing as the combination of
people in my group made for excellent problem solving skills as a whole team as that was a
huge skill that was necessary when we had to do on the spot thinking when teaching this class,
as we got no preparation time. When we had gotten there we felt very put on the spot as we had
nothing prepared. The materials that were given to us were 1 meter long ruler to use as sort of
like a pointing stick, 2 pieces of chalk and a chalkboard to use to create visuals in order to
communicate clearly to the kids. We ended up teaching the kids some english words through
visuals. We started off with pretty simple things like animals. We had drawn an animal on the
board that they would be able to recognized (e.g a dog or cat) and would then say the word
several times in english, having the kids then repeat the same after for us. We had helped them
out with things like they're pronunciation and their confidence when communicating. It was quite
a struggle to have this class educational, to have them learn something but to also have them
be entertained at the same time. It was definitely an amazing and memorable experience for me
- during this task my team and I had been challenged several times and because of this we
developed and carried certain skills with us from that experience.

What was your role in the team? *

What did you do? How did you contribute? Leader or teamworker?
In this case I had worked as a team worker because I had already experienced working in a
leadership role just before that (as this was our break from working on building the classrooms,
therefor I wanted to take sort of a mental break and work as a team worker for this activity rather
than trying to take charge. Working as a team member meant that I followed the instructions of
the leader in my group, but since my leader was a democratic leader I was able to voice my
opinions and share ideas that I had. In terms of belbins theory, I consider myself to have been a
plant in this situation (a creative individual in the group, I was able to come up with innovative
ideas when we were stuck on what to teach the class next, or stuck on ways of how to make
teaching them something educational more fun and not as boring.) Being a plant, I had come up
with a few innovative ideas and problem solved when these idea stumps occurred and people
were unsure of what to do next. An example of this was when we finished teaching the kids
about animals, I had decided to play a game that would be both educational and interactive with
them therefore it would have double benefits. Since they had just learnt about animals and that
was fresh in their minds I thought it would be a good idea to play a game of hangman as these
words were still fresh in their minds. The creative twist I put on it to keep the kids slightly more
entertained and to not lose their interest was the idea of completing a dog's face rather than

drawing a full hang-man. A child was then chosen from the class ( a volunteer ) as they had
started off the game as it would be better than us starting off the game as we would be unsure
of the level most students are at, so we wouldnt know what would be too challenging or too
easy. I would also say that I was a specialist in this activity, as I had worked with kids several
times before when I had lived in india when working for different charities and local schools.
Because I had past experience this meant that I knew what would work in these kinds of
situations , what strategies and methods we should use in order to make us the most successful
that we could be. These 2 roles I mentioned are thinking oriented roles in terms of belbin's
theory as in this activity I was more focused on thinking and problem solving / coming up with
ideas rather than leading the class and speaking the most.

How did you perform as an individual?*

For the M & D criteria make comparisons with other individual performances in your team and
relate to theory.
I think I performed quite well as an individual as I felt like I was putting in a large amount of
effort as I was constantly thinking of ways on the spot to improve the situation, and solving
problems that would come up like if we didnt have any content to teach the kids. As I took the
role of a team member in this situation rather than a leader, I definitely possessed completely
different traits in comparison to my previous activity. I mean this in the sense that I was a lot
more thinking oriented rather than action of people orientated as I work best in a team and
product the highest quality outcome when im working under a thinking orientated role - that way
I will benefit the team as much as I can when working as a team member. Having this
generalized thinking orientated role I brought the qualities of being innovative, problem solving,
being logical and specializing with years of experience to my team. I definitely think these are
very important skills to possess when working in this team as no one else had these same skills
and qualities about them, therefor without me bringing these qualities to the table the team
wouldnt have been able to function as successfully as it did.
I had also developed skills throughout this experience based off what I was viewing from my
team members, and how they reacted in a situation like this. Everyone in my team brought very
different skills and qualities to this experience therefore I was able to learn from everyone elses
qualities and start developing them as my own. An example is one member in my team, Kara,
she had taken the action orientated roles as opposed to me taking more thinking oriented roles.
She was more involved with the students when I was more involved in teaching/coming up with
good quality content. Karas roles involves the shaper as she was highly motivated to progress
and have the team be as successful as possible - especially in terms of entertaining the kids
and making sure that they had a good experience. She kept people motivated throughout the
process so we were able to perform to a better standard during this whole experience. She was
also an implementer, meaning that she had actually carried out the tasks and ideas that I had
thought of - she would speak to the class and take action in getting involved with them.
Because of having someone like her on my team, she influenced me throughout the experience,
so towards the end I had already developed certain skills that derived from her like interacting
with the kids and speaking to the class as I wasnt doing that much in the beginning, but had
done that very frequently towards the end. This shows that when working in a team, it can affect
your performance as an individual and alter it, leaving you with new skills and qualities.

How did you perform as a team? *

For the M & D criteria make comparisons with other team performances and relate to theory.
As a team I think we performed quite well as our group was made up of people who possessed
a whole variety of different sorts of skills and qualities. When they were all combined the team
was extremely efficient and productive as we had a variety of people therefore we were able to
overcome many situations that did and could have occurred. When starting working in this
group we had come across some obstacles as a team. We had come into the class unprepared
therefor we were quite shy and not very confident at all. We had a difference in opinions within
my team and a few disagreements when thinking of ways to teach them, and topic areas we
should teach to them. We had disagreements on things like whether the topic would be too hard
on them, whether they would enjoy what were teaching etc. Because of this little conflict that
occurred in the beginning of the class, we had wasted a bit of time and were inefficient at the
start of the lesson - which was very disappointing when we look back at this as we wish we had
just started cooperating a little bit earlier on rather than how we did later.
We started off kind of rough but we were able to overcome this as our team consisted of a group
of people who were all familiar and comfortable with each other, therefore we were working in a
comfortable environment in terms of teams as we also had quite a good team dynamic not only
in this activity but in previous activities and tasks we had worked on together. Whilst we were
struggling, one member of the team sort of automatically took a leadership role as a democratic
leader and started assigning us roles based off our personal qualities and experiences as a
team before(e.g aisha you think of ideas and solutions, kara you take action and present to the
class, nicole you monitor the progress whilst helping aisha with ideas - in order to see if the
students are actually enjoy our content or not so were able to see if we should change it as we
had quite a bit of time). The way we overcame the creative stump at the beginning , not
knowing the content for the children and how to teach them - I had started thinking of ideas
and trying to think of a solution for our problem as fast as possible. Because I work quite well
under pressure, I was able to come up with an idea quickly enough and start off my doing visual
drawings and pictograms, reading them out etc. Because we had a team member (kara) who
was good working with kids she had the role of presenting our content whilst trying to engage
with the students (of course all of us tried to help her out when communicating to the children
but she was the main). Whilst kara was presenting to the class, nicole would observe the kids
by regular reviews and judging by their reactions, suggesting to us whether we should change it
up or not. In the meantime, our leader would be trying to motivate us as a group whilst
communicating strategies and plans when it seemed as if the audience wasnt enjoying the
content. Her ability to communicate with us made sure that we would have the highest success
rate that we could as it meant that we were able to work quickly and effectively.
We had also followed tuckman's theory during our time as working as a team. We had gone
through the forming, storming and norming stage when our leader had been established and we
had agreed on our roles and as it moved onto the norming stage our activity started being more
team based rather than leader based. At this point we had discussed the content and the plan of
what we were going to do and all agreed on it, despite having a little bit of conflict in the
beginning to do with our content and agreeing on something we all think would be successful.
After this we went on to performing while we all had ttaken action and started presenting our
content to the students - with kara mostly - the action oriented role - speaking to the children.
After we had finished teaching the class, it had come to an end and we had reached the
adjourning stage and had broken up as a team as the activity was already over and complete.
Overall we did a good job as the students seemed to be happy and pleased, and we didnt have
too many moments of doubt therefore we think it went successfully as we all worked very
efficiently and productively, there were hardly any moments where we were inefficient or

unproductive as a team. In comparison to other teams, I think we managed to do the best in

terms of how successful we are as our students gave our team the best overall rating and were
the most pleased with us and our content. This was because in the other teams there wasnt
much of a variety in terms of qualities and skills that people possessed. For example, one team
was pretty much made up of people who worked best when presenting their content and
information...people who are best at speaking to the class. The whole group consistent of these
kind of people therefore there wasnt an efficient, clear leader, or anyone who had good problem
solving skills etc. or any kind of diversified qualities, traits or skills. Because there was no
variety, they were inefficient and ended up being unsuccessful as many situations came up
which they were not able to handle and deal with properly as they were inexperienced or not
knowledgeable in that area.
What were your strengths? *
Communication, problem solving, time management, supporting others, physical abilities,
confidence, motivation, resolving conflict, praise, questioning, body language, listening,
awareness, creativity etc
I would say that my strengths in this situation was my problem solving skills. Because I was
working in more of a thinking oriented role ( which is naturally the kinds of roles I gravitate
towards to as I posses a lot of the qualities required in those roles ), I was able to think of
practical solutions under pressure, and come up with innovative ideas ( a part of problem
solving ). I was able to make these smart quick decisions (which in itself is sort of taking a
calculated risk) which saved us a lot of time and made us more efficient and successful overall
as a group. Creativity was another one of my strengths as I had to come up with fun, innovative
ideas that would suit the wants of the young kids we were teaching - therefore our games and
teaching style needed to be creative in order to not more them and be ineffective. I also was
quite strong in the communication area as a huge part of my role was sharing my ideas. I
shared my ideas very clearly and quickly in order to get the practical part and have action taken
as fast as possible in order to not waste or lose any time.

What were your weaknesses? *

Communication, problem solving, time management, supporting others, physical abilities,
confidence, motivation, resolving conflict, praise, questioning, body language, listening,
awareness, creativity etc
I think quite a clear weakness of mine during this situation was my confidence. As im quite a
naturally shy person, I find it very hard to speak in front of a large crowd or a large group of
people, therefore I had to communicate my ideas on the spot to another person, instead of
being able to go straight from my mind, into staying it outloud to the class to save time.
Whispering my ideas to someone else took up quite a lot of extra time once you add it all up in
the end and looking back at it now just seems like sort of a useless step, and waste of time.
I also think another weakness of mine is my body language. When working in a team thats aim
is to successfully present to and entertain a group of people, its important to have good
confidence and body language throughout or else viewers can feel awkward or uncomfortable.
As Im naturally quite shy and awkward my body language isnt as welcoming as it should be
therefore I feel as if that personal trait lowered the quality of the experience that some of the
students had, making me a little bit inefficient and oblivious as a team member.

How could you improve for next time?*

Make future recommendations for yourself, your team and other individuals / teams.
Personally I think something that would be an improvement for myself would be to improve and
boost my confidence, especially when working with a large amount of people. A better way I
could have done my role and improving my confidence would be by stopping myself from
communicating my message only to the person presenting to the class. I feel like the kids
would have enjoyed it more and it would have been more successful as the whole group spoke
more equally as a group rather than put most of it on one person to say and just have the others
stand around. Because of my issue with confidence and speaking in front of large crowds for a
long time, I could start off by very briefly introducing my idea to the audience as well as my team
members, and have the more confident speakers go on from there and build onto my idea. I
would like to work on my skills of being an action oriented person in order to enable myself to be
more confident - also improving my communication skills at the same time.
In terms of how my team could improve - we should learn not to panic in stressful situations. As
we first came into this task of teaching kids as a very impromptu, unexpected and unplanned for
activity we were not thinking of pre planning content or anything of that nature beforehand as we
knew very last minute. Because of this when we first entered the room we all struggled with
what to do and how to start off, it took us a little while to kick off and start properly presenting
efficiently to a high standard. A way to improve this next time is to always come into situations
already thinking ahead of time. As soon as im informed about a situation next time, in the future
I will make sure to first think of the practicalities and logistics of the actual situation im about to
step into and think of how, as a team, we could do this in a fast and efficient way that wouldnt
waste time, even when thrown into a last minute situation. As a team we should be more
prepared in general as we never know what situation we can fall into next or where a certain
activity could lead us to. Its important to be prepared and think of all situations/risks that could
occur in order for you to be the most prepared for it - therefore constantly being efficient and
effective.
In terms of what I saw in other teams, I saw that some teams were chosen just based off the
fact that these people want to be with their friends - not based off the fact that these people
working together would make a good time. next time they should be more aware of the fact that
a good team needs to be made up of people who posses a range of different skills and qualities
in order to most successful and efficient.
Was there any conflict in the group? *
If yes, describe why and how was it resolved? If no, what did the leader do to ensure this was
the case?
As mentioned before there was a little bit of conflict when we were first put in this situation as
we came into it quite unprepared and were all stressed by the idea of being in front of 40+
people, having to teach with no plan thought of beforehand. We had all had disagreements with
each other as we were all throwing out random ideas without really thinking of the logistics or
the actual effect it would have on our success. We had managed to resolve these issues by
organizing ourselves out first by having a leader and delegated, assigned roles. Once we were
more organized and more of an official, formal team we were then able to think with a little less
pressure on our backs and I was able to come up with a proper idea in terms of content. After
thinking of this idea although not everyone came in sudden agreement with it, but we all came
to terms and to an agreement with a compromised idea that would suit everyone's opinions. A
way to prevent conflict in the future is to think before you speak, and to respect people's
professional opinions and ideas, taking them into consideration.

How else could you use relevant theory to analyse the overall performance today? *
Leadership styles, Belbin, Tuckman, Adair, Honey, Margerison & Mccann, Woodcock,
I think a theory that would be very relevant to my team's case would be the action centered
leadership theory by John Adair. The diagram that refers to this theory relates heavily to how our
leader was thinking at the time, as she constantly had these 3 main objectives in mind
achieving the task - She wanted to achieve the task to a high standard and quality, making our
task a success and to be as efficient as possible as a team. She did this in many ways like
attempting to increase morale in order to motivate workers, as well as by organizing the team to
make sure that work was to be done efficiently.
managing the team or group - Our leader had set roles almost immediately for each person as a
way to manage the group, ensuring that everyone had a role that was suited towards them and
their personal qualities. She would manage the group by constantly pushing us in the right
direction.
managing individuals - Our team leader would constantly monitor individuals to see if the team
as a whole was being effective or not, and if not she would observe individuals to see who was
bringing the team down. She would keep reminding people to do certain aspects of their role
making sure theyre trying their best and working to the best of their ability.