I have accepted the Head Wrestling Coach/ Social Studies Special Education position at J.J. Pearce High School. I will miss the great administrators, staff, and especially students at Dan F. Long Middle School and R.L. Turner High School. I will be taking a break from my action research as the tutorials and pull out program at Pearce are significantly different then at Long. I have discussed my action research with my new campus principal and I will find out who my new site supervisor is when school starts. I may continue to work on tutorial development or possibly a new action research project. I will keep you informed.
Followers
Saturday, July 14, 2012
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Week 5- "What have I learned?"
Action research is significantly different than the research I competed
as an undergraduate finance and marketing major. Traditional research is reading what experts
in the field think and then trying to understand how you can use their concepts
and ideas to further your understanding.
Action research is the process of inquiry and self-reflection in order
to better understand the situation or world around you. Action research is especially important in
the career as an educational administrator.
It can be used to make any part of your school more efficient and
effective in order to increase student achievement.
I learned that blogs are very
effective way to communicate with students, staff, and stakeholders. Blogs can also be used as an online
discussion. They can be used as an information
board, but are extremely effective to show the process of inquiry of a change
to our campus. Administrators can also
make blogs open to gain insight from stakeholders to collaborate ideas with
others action researchers. There are
many ways that blogs can help gain insight and increase collaboration during
the action research process and increase communication in my campus. I plan to create a blog for my wrestling team
and classroom along with my action research project.
The administrator interviews
were very helpful to understand how others have used action research to
increase student achievement on their campuses.
Dr. Timothy Chargios said to never stop learning. He also spoke about how there are always
things that can be done better when we are examining a topic for action research. As long as the end result will increase
student learning, it is a great topic for action research. This idea was very interesting to me. All campuses have specific ways of doing
things, but if examined further, many times there are ways of doing it that can
make a greater impact on our students.
The
discussion board and peer comments on our blog were extremely helpful in our
process of action research. I was able
to see others’ action research process and gain insight to develop my own research
plan. Mrs. Guy and Mrs. Klemen both
commented about how I would evaluate my results. I realized that there might not be a
quantitative answer to my action research project. This took a lot of reflection to answer. I can, however, by surveying, doing
walk-throughs, and group discussions, understand how having focused tutorials
can have a positive affect on the staff, campus culture, and our students
academic achievement. I also did not
think of including parents’ input. Based
on Mrs. Stephens’ comment, I plan on offering the survey to parents during
report card pick up and putting a link on our home page to also receive
feedback from our stakeholders. This
process of peer evaluation has helped me to not only analyze my research but
also add activities and other opportunities for action research in my
internship plan and administration career.
My action research plan has been a continued
discussion with my site supervisor, who is also my campus principal. I feel that this has helped me gain respect
and helped me to collaborate with our administrative team. I have been able to gain his insight and
include ideas of my own on how we are going to evaluate the successfulness of
our focused tutorials program. This has
also giving me insight into how change is implemented and discussed as an
administrator.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
Week 4- "Finalized my Research Project"
I have finalized my action research project with the help of my campus supervisor, university field supervisor, and other action researchers. I am excited to see what changes we can make the for students at our individual campuses and what information I can learn from the other action researchers at Lamar University. I have added stakeholders to the people I plan to survey which was suggested by one of my peers. This suggestion can only strengthen my research and the confidence our stakeholders have in the education we are offering in their community.
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