Interpersonal Skills and Team Building

We have our Interpersonal Skills and Team Building last July 21,2015 at USEP hostel. I am very excited of the outcome of this seminar so that I can enhance and improve my interpersonal skills by communicating to my fellow classmates and interact with new classmates and to help with group works and I can contribute my skills to present our work remarkably. The seminar starts late because some of the officer haven't arrived yet. So our facilitator Maam Mae start our seminar with a prayer and singing the National Anthem. Maam Mae introduced her self to us and what are the purpose of the seminar. 

We are instructed to group ourselves and having a 5 members each group. We are happy because most of us (batch mate) are joined together. And Maam Mae started the seminar with 3 questions that we must fill and share with our groupmates. The 3 questions are: In this seminar, I expect _____ ; In this seminar, I contribute ____ ; How do I feel today?; We are given a piece of manila paper and a pentel pen,  we must write down our answers which the answers are the same with our group mates. So Maam Mae also present a slide with a list of smileys, and we must choose 1 smiley that represents our group, we chose the demure smiley, because we are shy.   We presented our ideas to the other groups, and what we are expecting on this seminar. We have different opinions and different emotions we share in this activity, and we are having fun. So after the activity, Maam Mae presented a picture of an Elephant having many legs, and Maam Mae selects some students on their opinions about the elephant's legs and how many legs are present. Many of my classmates have different answer for that. Also Maam Mae presented a picture of a duck, but most of my classmates didn't realize it, that the picture was a duck. I learned many things in this first activity we had, it was only one picture with many different ideas, opinions, and perceptions. It is the same with our events in life, we have different ideas in many ways, and there are no person with the same ideas to others, because we are not the same. And also being a person and a community to other people, we must appreciate our own uniqueness and appreciate the uniqueness of other people around us. And as a fellow person, we must respect and understand each problem and ideas that they share with us and we must understand their opinions. Because we can't decide the will of other person about their ideas and opinions, because they have different minds and perspectives in life, we must not decide for themselves, because they have the right to give such beautiful ideas and opinions because of their uniqueness and great knowledge. The last thing we must to do, is to accept them as a person who contributed to their community and help through ideas and opinions, and to respect them as a person, and we must understand their feelings and ideas towards many things.

After the first activity, We learned a lot of things, I explained my learning's above this paragraph. So Maam Mae started the session 1 activity.  She starts introducing the house rules that we must follow it and to be part of it. The rules are: clear the decks; participate,for me this is the one of the most important rule that we must follow from the start until the seminar will be ended. Because participating in many activities can gain new friends and also can improve our interpersonal skills; listen, also in order to participate and learn, we must also listen to the facilitator in what they said to us, so that we can understand all the values and the purpose of each activity; share, we must share our skills to others, and also we must share our feelings in each activity we had, so that we can express our knowledge about something special that can help us to develop our interpersonal skills; keep the secrets, this rule must be followed by all of us because all we share must kept in order to achieve our goals; participate, Maam Mae repeat this rule because in order to participate in all activities and to ensure that we can learn many things after the seminar; enjoy/happy , we must enjoy while listening and participating in activities, and also to make new friends; and the last thing is learn, we must learned all the teaching after the seminar in order to improve our interpersonal skills. The title of the first session is " I am Me". We are given a piece of paper, inside of it is a tree with different person; hanging, swinging, alone, playing, lovers, and many more. We must choose a specific person in the tree that represent ourselves. So I was thinking of what kind of person represents me, and I choose the  person who is sitting in a branch thinking deeply and alone. For me it represents me because I am a lonely person, and always chill in all problems, but I myself have many problems inside me, but I show to my classmates and friends that I am still happy. And also I overcome my problems on my own. After that, we are group with another classmates to share our represented person in the tree. In our group, my 2 group mates choose the same person who swing in a branch, and my other 2 group mates and I choose the same person who is sitting alone and thinking deeply. We share many experiences about it and we learn our own perspectives in life. We learned many things about our new friends about their experiences why they choose that person. After the activity, " I am Me ", we are given another sheet of paper and it was a poem entitled I am Me, we read it all, and Maam Mae explained it all the special phrases and sentences in every paragraph. The poem is all about one self that for me it describing me as a person, and how I interact with other people and things, and all experiences we can share and experienced in our future life and nowadays.

After the session 1 , Maam Mae and we take our break and have a snack, our snack is a bread and a C2 solo. It was a delicious snack. And after we take our break, Maam Mae present a dance. It called " Skeletal Dance ". We are instructed to dance the skeletal dance, it was very awkward to dance it because I think its a lame song, but when we started to dance the skeletal dance, we are enjoying our own movements and my classmates movements. We are laughing about it. And after dancing the skeletal dance, Maam Mae started Session 2 entitled "Roots and Wings of my person-hood". So at first I am thinking what is this activity all about. From the title itself, roots and wings are like the branches and offspring of a family tree. Because in a family tree it is a picture of your whole family or the persons in which where they come from, and also where I am belong. And also a family tree represent family relationships and how they are connected to each other and to other person in our society. So Maam Mae started telling us about a dining table in which our each family eats together, and talk to each problems inside and outside their home. In a dining table we all have a specific place where we sit and enjoy our own meal. Maam Mae give us a clean sheet of paper and instructed us to draw our own dining table with our family. We must draw our members of the family through a symbol, and why you draw that particular person that kind of symbol, what is the purpose of every family members in your dining table and not just in dining table, but the purpose of having a good family. We get a lot of crayons and started to draw my own dining table. My dining table is a rectangular shape, and I draw my self as a star symbol, because Im the youngest grandson of my grandfather and grandmother. And for me Im the best in my house. I draw my grandfather as a sun, because he is the one who cooks our every meal. And also we quarrel many times especially when eating. I draw my grandmother as a heart symbol. Because she serves as my second mother since my father and mother died when I was still a kid. I really love my grandmother but I can't say it to her, because I am shy. There will be a perfect time so that I can say to her my true feelings. And the last one is my cousin, I draw him as a smiley symbol, we are not very close but we spend our childhood in the same house, but he is married now and go separate ways from our grandmother and grandfather and our home. And after we draw our dining table with our family members, we must share it to our group mates, we are group again into 4 members each.  We started sharing our drawing, and we know the experiences of each of my group mates. They said all their problems inside their family, and they got a perfect and complete family. Not like me I dont have my mother and father anymore. After we share our experiences, I can feel their feelings towards it. And by looking into some other groups, some are seriously sharing their emotions, and expressing them to their groupmates, and i saw somebody crying. I know her feeling just like me but I just keep it by myself. After the 15 minutes discussion and sharing of our dining table with our groupmates, we are instructed to post our drawing in the boards, and after posting it, it called an "Art Gallery" , and we see different kinds of dining table, different kinds of symbols and expressions, and their family members. I saw a lot of complete family, and some of my classmates started to cry. There are different emotions of every person, and we don't know each of their problems in life, we must understand them, and try to comfort them with our best to support them in needs of help about their big problems in life, in order to help them to overcome it. And after the Art Gallery, Maam Mae asked us , what we felt by making the dining table. Maam Mae interview some of my classmates and tell their story and their feelings towards it. The lesson I learned in this activity is that our family has shaped the person that we are.

The last session , is a teamwork activity,  We must represent our group's identity by singing, dancing, acting, and many more. Maam Mae call a representative in each member and draw a piece of paper from her hands. Our group choose the paper with dancing. So we must present our identity through a dance. So we are given a time to think and to practice our dance. And after some minutes, we started to present it, each of the groups present very well and they are all talented. After we present, Maam Mae asked about the contribution of each of our members. Maam Mae also talked about the 7 functions, Maintenance functions. Also Maam Mae present a short video clip about the wisdom of geese, its all about a life of a geese. She share also the self oriented functions. Maam Mae ended the seminar with questions: are we satisfied?; contribute well?; how do you feel?; And also we learn a lot of things and to improve our interpersonal skills. And she ended the seminar with the commitment, we light our candles and pray and say our commitments. I learned, develop, and enhance my interpersonal skills and to interact with new faces, new classmates, and new friends.