The end of action research course, BUT not the end of the project!!

Now that I have completed the last assignment for the action research course and all I have left to do is submit it I wanted to share some of my reflections from this course. There are many more that I have not listed and I know many others feel the same. The number one thing I took from this course is that my teacher duties and soon my administrative duties should always include reflection and action research. I will continue to post along the way about my action research and hopefully will complete it on time, at the end of the school year. The following are my reflections for this Action Research Course. This action research course had provided me with more useful information, techniques and tools than just about any other course I have ever taken. As a teacher I have heard, and probably said more than once, “if only I could make a change here we could be more successful.” I now see how that is possible. As a teacher I can take all of the things I have learned here in in this course and develop action research plans involving other or alone that can make a difference on my campus and further. I found the lectures by employees of school districts very useful. It demonstrated for us how districts and personnel in areas around us are using action research to improve their districts, schools and lives of staff and students. I found the action research at Pasadena High School in Pasadena Texas to be the most heartwarming to me. I have said many times since I met my husband and learned that he was the only child in his family of five children to graduate while attending Pasadena High School, something needed to be implemented to help children in that area to be successful in school and life no matter where they come from. Discussion boards in this course have been very helpful in building a community of students and professionals that can lean on each other for support, encouragement and ideas. I have only taken one course here at Lamar University but both times I felt that students were dedicated to helping each other through the courses and learning. I have found much encouragement to continue my research from fellow students and for that I am extremely grateful because it is being met with resistance on my campus due to teachers already being overloaded and frustrated. Encouragement from peers is an invaluable resource that can make or break a person’s spirits and help them to work harder than ever to achieve great things. I have found that all the readings have been greatly beneficial to developing, implementing and evaluating my action research plan. At no time did I feel lost as to what to do or how to go about my tasks because I had explicit instructions and examples. The work was in no way done for me so I was able to make it my own and be guided through my readings to make it a well thought through, easily implemented plan that will continue to be evaluated long after this course has completed. One thing that I think is especially important in this course is the use of blogs. I think that blogs are an excellent way to share information. I have many friends that use them to share personal experiences, and there is even one attached to our class web pages but are not utilized to the fullest extent. In action research your plan and ultimately results can be very informative and beneficial to many educators. Without a proper way to share this information it does no one any good except for yourself and who you can personally talk to. The blog allows for us to follow our classmates from this course and their action research. Like one gentleman commented on my blog that he would like to alter it to fit his science classroom and that is what action research is all about. We are all here to make our campuses a better place and there is no way for us to all the action research necessary. Therefore if we share our findings and plans it allows for others to make similar adjustments and plans at their school or districts. Educational professionals should all share one common goal at least, at that is to help all students succeed to the fullest extent of their abilities, and sharing information that can help them to achieve that goal is essential.

Site Supervisor Visit!

I have shared my Action Research Plan with my site supervisor during a meeting after school one day this week. He and I have met many times to discuss this plan and also the training I helped to provide our teachers already. This meeting was just a review of what we had previously discussed and agreed upon, and looking at it in writing. I shared with him the suggestion of the collaboration addition to the plan and he also thought this was great idea since he is requiring all teachers to have stations up and running in their rooms after the holiday break. My site supervisor was able to come to my classroom and do a walk through during station time this week by chance. He was very pleased with what he saw. He noted that all students we on task and actively participating in math only activities. He also noted that conversations about math were the only ones taking place between students. I happened to be in a station with a child that was struggling with a concept and he enjoyed the dialogue of how to appropriately navigate the station, referring back to our classroom activity and lesson, as well as what he was going to do with it later. The site supervisor felt the child had a better understanding and displayed this by his ability to successfully work in the station once I moved on. This was all great news and hopefully will provide our students with the tools they need to succeed in math.

Action Research Plan

OUTCOMES	ACTIVITIES	RESOURCES/ RESEARCH TOOLS NEEDED	RESPONSIBILITY TO ADDRESS ACTIVITIES	TIME LINE	Benchmarks/ ASSESSMENT	Revisions to SIP/PIP based on monitoring and assessments
Stations pulled straight from lessons taught-not commercially created, I can statements essential for students, implement over 6 weeks’ time, etc.	Research how math stations have been implemented in others classes. (Debbie Diller Training and book)	Book, time, time to attend training	Myself, instructional coach, assistant principal, kindergarten teacher, first grade teacher	October-November 2011	Create a presentation to train other teachers on campus	Math stations will be implemented in every math classroom
Found that many teachers already had a form of math stations going so they would just need some small changes and advancements, teachers said task seemed easy enough to accomplish, worries are time constraints	Train all math teachers from our campus (other campuses also chose to join our training)	Presentation, books for all participants to reference to later, examples of work stations, video of our students participating in work stations	Trainers-myself, kindergarten teacher, first grade teacher, and instructional coach	November	“make and take”/questions session after training
	Implement at least one station for every two students in each classroom	Materials, storage, time, extra assistance or guidance	All math teachers on campus	November-January 2011	Classroom observations, surveys
	Continuously update and circulate math stations based upon student need, lessons taught and review topics, student participation	Materials, time, extra assistance or guidance	All math teachers on campus, instructional coach	January-June	Classroom observations, discussions, test scores, surveys on six weeks basis
	Collaborate with other teachers at grade level (as well as instructional specialist as available) to discuss new station ideas and issues or questions	Teachers, time	Teachers, instructional specialist if available	December-June	Attending meetings to participate

Interviews

Part of our assignment for week 2 of our class was to watch three interviews with very educating well informed gentleman about action research. This to me was very beneficial because we can see how action research is being used in school districts near us, even if our district is not currently taking part in such practices. Below is my findings in this interviews, important topics they addressed and my reflections based on this!

Timothy Chargois, the director of Research, Planning and Development for Beaumont ISD discussed the action research project that has been proposed and will take place in their district that teaches teachers how to be data driven. This type of project will allow for students and teachers to have quick, purposeful, and impactful information to understand where each students needs lie. This means that the instruction can impacted and changed tomorrow and there is not an extended wait time like there has been in the past. This will impact the learning of the students immediately and if used properly have a positive impact. Another type of action research that he has approved to take place after state testing is one of effective and ineffective teachers. The conductors of this research will do a survey about what teachers are doing to show their ethical values towards students. This will help them to research ethical situations that are being handled by effective and ineffective teachers. This will impact the way teachers approach their students, as well how the student perceive their teachers purpose of being there and teaching them. This could have a great impact of the morale, culture and climate of their campuses. Timothy Chargois states that the purpose for the research projects in their district is that they will all have a positive impact for a certain demographic or more than one. He reminded us of the importance of protecting the identity of the students and staff during action research, which can be overlooked sometimes due to the fact that you are trying to benefit the school. Parental permission is always a must when you are involving students in your action research. There needs to be a decision made in the beginning about whether data collected will be secure or not, and how to go about that in the appropriate manner. All of these things seem minor but can have a catastrophic effect on your project and career if not properly handled. Mr. Chargois also reminded us that the time of year when the projects take place can also be an important factor, such as data driven teachers will need to be done before testing so that the results can have a positive effect on scores, but ethical and unethical situations can wait until after testing since it does not have a direct impact on instruction despite its positive effect on teacher and student relationships. The last two things that I took from the interview conducted with Mr. Timothy Chargois is that we should never stop learning, this is such an important aspect for all teachers and administrators because we should never expect our students to do something we are unwilling to do; secondly that research can and should be conducted in the classroom by teachers. This will impact your students learning and retention a great deal and will make you a more successful teacher when your students become more successful in your classroom. Dr. Kirk Lewis, the superintendent of Pasadena ISD had some very practical and important applications of action research. I believe I was drawn to this particular interview because my husband and his four siblings attended Pasadena ISD and out of the five children, my husband was the only one to graduate. The expectation graduation grant that enables the district to conduct action research that promotes rigor and relevance to the curriculum hoping to ensure that the ninth graders graduate on time is essential for this area. He discussed how they use the data gathered and apply it to instruction to ensure that effective instruction is taking place. Dr. Lewis states that this is taking place at the district level, campus level, grade level and student level. I believe that with this many people looking at the data and changes being made based upon that data will make for more impactful and rigorous instruction that is relevant to the students, promoting more of the students to stay in school until graduation. Dr. Lewis encourages all teachers and administrators to take research and tear it apart to get to the meat of what applies to their district and campuses. It will give more purpose and support to changes that need to be made in your district or campus. He states that we should translate our findings into what our needs are. Dr. Lewis also reiterates that we should research and implement what is practical for us. Then decide what we need to apply to our campus or classroom and the situation we are in. I believe this is important in order for people that are unfamiliar with action research to understand that this time and energy is being spent in order to benefit your campus and your students as well as the staff and teachers. Dr. Lewis reminds us that this will keep researchers more interested, more focused on the outcome, and students will then benefit more from the action research. I think it is very important to remember that action research is not another tool that is created in order to try another strategy created by someone that knows nothing about you or your students and campus. This process is created for you to use the vast array of information and experiences created by other professionals and piece together what you think could help your students the most and how to implement those changes. This way you can monitor the changes and their effects on your students and make adjustments appropriately, not just abandon an ineffective tool because you have no ownership of the solution that has been implemented.

My Action Research Project

I will be conducting my action research project to see if math stations can improve our students long term retention of skills as well as improve weekly, unit and semester test scores. As a school we have struggled with our math scores on the TAKS test as well as in our unit tests. One reason that has been brought to light by teachers is that our curriculum teaches the concept quickly and does not allow much time to revisit the concepts before students are tested. I have heard that math stations if implemented in your daily instruction can help solve this problem.

Students will benefit from this greatly because they will have a deeper understanding of skills that have been taught. Teachers will benefit because the important concept they have taught is reinforced with students more often. Some guiding questions that I will answer through the action research is:
How will we decide what skills are used in stations?
How many stations should be in a classroom and for how long?
How do you ensure that students are gaining a deeper understanding through the stations?
Are test scores improving?
Can students explain what they are doing and why?

What I've learned and how I can use Action Research thus far...

Action research is a tool that can be used in groups or as an administrator individually. It is a reflection based inquiry that provides the best opportunity to take ownership of practices that need to be improved upon. Either as a member of a PLC, leadership team, individual teacher, or administrator it requires you to look at your practices as well as data and determine where there is a breakdown between what you are trying to accomplish and what is actually being accomplished. Then either as a team or individually you will research, read professional literature, talk to other professionals and look at materials used to assist in the particular area of need that you identified. Then a connection between theory and practice will be made and aid you in developing a plan of action to benefit your campus and students. Then as the plan is implemented you will revisit the problem and look at data and other resources from your campus in order to determine if the practices you have changed are being effective and the problem is solved or is improving. This will pave the way for you to take further action or continue with the action you are taking.
I believe that I can use this now as a classroom teacher in order to improve my students learning and narrow gaps of learning between students the level they should be performing at. I also believe that I can use it and develop a PLC involving teachers at my grade level so we can learn together how to help our students as a whole. I believe that above all this can lead to teachers and others on campus becoming leaders in our organization. I also believe that as I become an administrator this will afford me the ability to create a leadership team and PLC's on campus that all learn together, thus providing students the example to follow of learning as a community.