February 4

One main idea from the IB approaches to learning that I have been using is communication skills. I have to communicate with multiple people that are much older than me and sometimes it can be harder to communicate with people in a different generation than you and convince them of things like how it is important to get animals spayed and neutered. Also when helping out at the yard sales I have to communicate with people of all ages and in both Spanish and English. I am learning how to successfully communicate with people of all ages and understand how to get my point across during a conversation where they might not understand exactly what I am trying to tell them. I have also worked on my social skills during these past few months. I am extremely shy, but now I have to be able to talk to lots of people. One of the main reasons that I have to learn this skill is that I have to be able to successfully communicate with people that want to adopt animals from the shelter since a lot of times Barbra is very busy so I have to help out with the process of figuring out which animal is the best match for the adopter’s lifestyle. I also have to be able to say no to people that are not a good fit, for example, a man wanted a dog that he could keep in an apartment but the dog he was looking at was extremely active and needed a place to run outside. Having to tell the guy that this dog was not going to fit his lifestyle was extremely hard, but I am getting much better at it.