Blogpost #14
Purpose Statement: These are the guidelines of my Group’s Charter.
“Our group agrees to extend grace to each other and work around each others’ schedules. College life is busy, especially with a pandemic going on, but we will do our best to make sure everyone can attend meetings. We agree to communicate with each other effectively, whether through email or text, and say whether we can come to a scheduled meeting/appointment or not. We will divide roles and work equally, and make sure that everyone has a chance to speak. If we have problems, the first step is to talk it out individually or with the rest of the group. The next step is to go to the instructor, who can step in if necessary. If someone doesn’t do their part of the work and doesn’t communicate, even when reached out to, then the work is reassigned and the person who failed to communicate forfeits their part of the work, and therefore their part in the grade.”
When we were creating our charter with the rules and guidelines to follow we were very intentional with our wording and intentions with our practices. The first thought that we all had is the fact that we’re in college. We all understand that college is very stressful and that life happens all around us all of the time. Meaning that there are things outside of our control that we can’t prepare ourselves for. With those thoughts, we decided to create a set of rules to embody that as best as possible. Our first guideline was to extend grace whenever possible, which means that if there is a time conflict or a need for a change in place for when we meet we will do our best to accommodate.
The next guideline is effective communication; to best extend grace and show common ground for everyone in the group we need to be aware of it. We request from each group member an open line of communication, whether that be through a text or email or anything that we can use to bring to the group as a whole. Because we understand that life happens we will be graceful but it definitely depends on the group member communicating with us properly.
With our rules and guidelines, we have made sure to be as graceful as possible. If there are still problems due to lack of communication or lack of work being done after numerous conversations then we have to enact the consequences piece of the charter. The first step would be to try and have a conversation with the person to make sure that they understand that we need them to complete their share of the work for the group. Next would be to speak with the instructor and lastly, if that didn’t work then we would ask them to leave the group. These consequences would only be put in play if absolutely necessary and only then.
