Confused a little in week 2

This week was confusing for me but I did get a better understanding of action research.  I collaborated with my mother on part 2 of this week’s assignment.  She is a counselor at my school and is familiar with the issues and areas of improvement on our campus.  She took a research class when she got her masters even though it was not for educational leadership.  She was able to help get as better understand of what it is and think of ideas that action research could improve my school or classes.  It was great to learn I have such a great resource in my mom.  As far as what my action research project is going to be I’m stuck.  My principal suggested something I should do because my site supervisor never responds to my emails.  I like what my principal is suggested and feel I should go with that topic because he took his time to out to guide me and give me feedback.  On the other hand I have developed a great passion for special education.  I wanted to look at how to improve our co-teach program or the effectiveness of how IEPs on my campus are being implemented.  My school hasn’t made AYP in the past 3 years due to the special ed sub population.  I’m going to do some research and see where it leads me.  Very confused but will see the light soon!

Blogs and Educational Leadership

I’m very excited about using a blog.  As I created mines and seen how my peers use theirs I realized the benefits of a blog.  Educational leaders can use blogs in a variety of ways to communicate to themselves, teachers, peers and the community.  A blog can be used as a journal for administrators to reflect about their practices or ideas they want to implement to improve their school. 

Using a blog can help an educational leader get immediate feedback or affirmation from a variety of people.  Like us an administrator could use a blog for action research.  Their blog can serve as a way to collect data, look at their thought process for reflection, and critique.  Principals can use a blog to communicate information or events happening at their school with parents, teachers, community and stakeholders.  Using a blog would be a great tool for all educational leaders to use.  I would also like to use a blog in my classroom to communicate with my students and parents.

Action Reaction in Action

    When I first read the term Action Research in our week 1 assignment an overwhelming feeling to over my body and my stress level began to rise.  Research, I hate doing research which is ironic being a science teacher.  As I began reading Leading with Passion and Knowledge by Nancy Fichtman Dana when I learned what action research was my level of stress went down.  I was no longer intimidated by action research.  Action research is “a systematic, intentional study of one’s own professional practice.” (Dana, 2009)  I learned that action research is inquiry learning for improvement.  Through action research you are the researcher and have to reflect on the good and bad things you have done.  Action research will not be successful if you don’t reflect on your practices. 

     I feel many of us use action research to some extent all the time in our classroom when we reflect about how well a lesson went, how our students did on a test, or how can we resolve issues in our class or within our campus.  I will be using action research to look areas that I need to improve in.  I will be looking at how to improve my special students success on assessments.  I follow their IEP but they are not performing well.  I have been reflecting and planning how I can improve my teaching to reach my special education students.  Having a son with a learning disability and seeing how horrible he did on STAAR woke me up.  I have failed my students and following an IEP is not enough.           

    Through action research I hope to gain knowledge that will help solve problems we have on campus and make our professional development more meaningful.  I learned action research is not pointing out the problem and relying on outsiders to tell me how to fix my problems but it is a “movement that focuses on the concerns of practitioners and engages practitioners in the design, data collection, and interpretation of data around their question.” (Dana, 2009)