Building Resilient Students and Mediation Term Paper

Building Resilient Students and Mediation - Term Paper Example Resiliency is an innate quality of students. Students are different in terms of their ability to manage stress, keep focus, manage their emotions and their emotional presentations, maintain their self-esteem even in the face of difficulties, etc. The trait of resilience can be determined by a number of factors: Feeling obligated to succeed or maintain one's composure due to one's duties towards family, friends or community; high self-esteem; good stress management techniques; etc. But resilience is also a consequence of someone's environments and social networks. Anyone can snap in an environment that is high-tension, high-conflict and stress-inducing; certainly, it will tax their resources no matter how vast. Conversely, even people with very low stress tolerance can flourish in an environment that controls stress extremely well. Further, even the toughest people are likely to become depressed or stressed out if they don't have a social network to vent to and use for relaxation. Thi s means that educators in their quest to create resilient students have two goals. They have to teach students how to manage stress, but they also have to control the environments that students are in so that they don't have too much stress to manage in the first place. These two are obviously somewhat at odds with each other: Teaching students how to manage stress requires a slight bit of stress in the first place, as an inoculation. Teaching children to manage deadlines, for example, requires giving them deadlines, which can be stressful. There is also clearly a dialectical relationship between these factors. Better stress management can help people build larger networks of friends and relationships which can help with stress management, for example. Someone's innate characteristics help to influence the environment, and someone's environment can help hone, challenge or tax their innate characteristics. Mediation fits into all of this in several ways. â€Å"Peer mediation is a wo nderful and effective strategy for helping students maintain their emotional balance... [E]ducators must set the stage for conflict resolution by setting clear expectations... Teaching students the skills for managing anger... comes next... Students need to know that anger is a normal emotion† (Thomsen, 2002, p. 114). Preparing for mediation, just like mediation itself, involves teaching skills such as really listening, anger management (learning to hold one's tongue long enough to get through a stressful meeting or process that can let someone get what they want), and so forth. Thomsen recommends â€Å"allow[ing] students who are experiencing a conflict to cool off† before attempting peer mediation (Thomsen, 2002, p. 114). â€Å"Remember, the brain and body are in an aroused state, and the rational mind is waiting in the wings†. Students going through the preparation process learn that preparing for mediation, negotiation and conflict resolution is just as impor tant as the process itself. Further, mediation and the process of preparation for it helps students get in touch with their emotions. â€Å"Learning the intrapersonal skill of introspection will serve students long after graduation† (Thomsen, 2002, p. 114). Many adults don't have proper introspection skills, unable to deeply reflect on their thoughts, motivations and beliefs. This drives conflict: It is very hard for someone to avoid making others angry if they don't know their own behavior; similarly, someone trying to appease someone else is

Strategies for Reaching global markets Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words - 1

Strategies for Reaching global markets - Essay Example According to Kanter (1995) such an action will not constitute an adequate response. This is so because success is based on an organisation’s ability to create, rather than predict the future by developing those products that will literally transform the way the world thinks (Kanter 1995:71). Within the context of today’s global competition, businesses and firms no longer compete as individual companies but try to corporate with other businesses in their activities (Wu & Chien 2007:2). These researchers went further to argue that, this strategy has become quite common in many businesses. The conventional vertical integrated company based business model is gradually being replaced by collaborative relationship between many fragmented, but complementary and specialized value stars and constellation (Wu & Chien:1). Against this background, this paper examines the various strategies used by companies to reach the global market. The first part of the paper, examines forms of foreign direct investment, the second part appreciates each of the methods while the last part of the paper presents the summary, conclusion and recommendation. In the years that follow after the Second World War, trade and investment have become increasingly intertwined. Within the first few decades after the war, most countries from Asia and Africa viewed Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) with suspicion, and wariness and the flow of FDI towards these areas has been relatively slower (Buckley 2004, Sumelong et al., 2003). To most of these countries, the presence of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) was seen as an impeachment to their national sovereignty. The situation was further aggravated with previous colonial experience and the fact that to some, FDI was a modern form of economic colonialism (Sumulong, Fan & Brooks 2003). According to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), the flow of FDI has substantially changed the