“Nothing within a school has more impact upon students in terms of skills development, self-confidence, or classroom behavior than the personal and professional growth of their teachers. When teachers examine, question, reflect on their ideas and develop new practices that lead towards their ideals, students are alive. When teachers stop growing, so do their students (Barth, 1981, p. 145).”
Effective and successful principals use action research as a tool to make effective changes, make improvements, produce academic achievement and promote “Lifelong Learning.”
As future administrators, we will face the daily challenges to impact student’s and teacher’s learning. Foremost, we must take charge of our own learning and as the “head learner,” we must lead by modeling the process to faculty, staff, and students.
Action Research will help us as school leaders, improve our campus, but most important, achieve student academic success for all students. We have been given the skill and knowledge to develop and how to implement our Action Research study.
In reflecting, I’ve come to the conclusion, that our discussions have been more than just collaboration among classmates and colleagues. We have made friendships without having met face to face. We listen to the words we read each week in our discussions and relate just as if we were there face to face. The distance that separates us is
inconceivable because there is no distance when we all communicate. We share and respect one another’s thoughts and views. Most of all, I think we listen with our hearts.
We are Life Long Learners!
Barth, R. (1981). The principal as staff developer. Journal of Education, 163(2), 144-162.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Improving the Collegiality at My Campus
Sunday, August 1, 2010
Here we Go!
What a week this has been! Those templates gave me a bad headache and long hours without sleep. I felt overwhelmed and a little confused.
The purpose of this action research project is to improve a positive school culture through collegial relationships. Collegial relationships that will help our teachers through collaboration, building trust and growing professionally will prove beneficial to all stakeholders. Improving collegial relationships among our teachers at our campus will be our first step towards having a school culture that will be effective in promoting parental participation and achieving academic success for all our children.
There will be three teacher surveys that will be created through survey monkey and teachers will be asked to login in to survey monkey.com and take the surveys on line. The time frame for the teacher surveys will be from the first nine weeks of school, in January, and after May 18th when the eighth graders finish TAKS testing. The student surveys will be will be a paper and pencil survey and distributed through our Focused Advisory Class. Eighth grade students will be given two surveys. The first survey will be during the first nine weeks of school and the second after TAKS testing. The second survey will also be given to seventh grade students. I will ask the math department to help me with the student surveys. The students will make a graphical display from the results of the data.
A small sample of student and teacher interviews will be conducted. I am not sure which teachers will be selected or whether to randomly select the sample. The interview questions will be created about school culture and our site supervisor’s input will be sought out. It will prove beneficial to have the full support of the administration in getting the teachers to participate in completing the surveys. Data from the teacher and surveys will be collected, compared in a graphical manner.
Observations will be conducted during the school day and on team building activities. The first observation will be on August 17, 2010, our first in service day of the 2010-2011 school year. Our teachers will not be aware of the action research project that I am conducting. There will be four other Early Release Professional Development Days in which I will continue my observations on our team building. I will reflect on my observations and my reflections will be used for questions on my teacher interviews. Data will be collected on my observations on team building and participation.
I am most excited about our teachers reading Todd Whitaker’s book entitled, “What Great Teachers Do Differently: 14 Things That Matter Most.” Teachers will be asked to read designated chapters per month and do a reflection by blogging and make an effort to read other blogs from colleagues. At this time, I am not sure whether to have teachers reflect with in their perspective teams or reflect with other teams. I will collect some data from the participation on the blogging.
The purpose of this action research project is to improve a positive school culture through collegial relationships. Collegial relationships that will help our teachers through collaboration, building trust and growing professionally will prove beneficial to all stakeholders. Improving collegial relationships among our teachers at our campus will be our first step towards having a school culture that will be effective in promoting parental participation and achieving academic success for all our children.
There will be three teacher surveys that will be created through survey monkey and teachers will be asked to login in to survey monkey.com and take the surveys on line. The time frame for the teacher surveys will be from the first nine weeks of school, in January, and after May 18th when the eighth graders finish TAKS testing. The student surveys will be will be a paper and pencil survey and distributed through our Focused Advisory Class. Eighth grade students will be given two surveys. The first survey will be during the first nine weeks of school and the second after TAKS testing. The second survey will also be given to seventh grade students. I will ask the math department to help me with the student surveys. The students will make a graphical display from the results of the data.
A small sample of student and teacher interviews will be conducted. I am not sure which teachers will be selected or whether to randomly select the sample. The interview questions will be created about school culture and our site supervisor’s input will be sought out. It will prove beneficial to have the full support of the administration in getting the teachers to participate in completing the surveys. Data from the teacher and surveys will be collected, compared in a graphical manner.
Observations will be conducted during the school day and on team building activities. The first observation will be on August 17, 2010, our first in service day of the 2010-2011 school year. Our teachers will not be aware of the action research project that I am conducting. There will be four other Early Release Professional Development Days in which I will continue my observations on our team building. I will reflect on my observations and my reflections will be used for questions on my teacher interviews. Data will be collected on my observations on team building and participation.
I am most excited about our teachers reading Todd Whitaker’s book entitled, “What Great Teachers Do Differently: 14 Things That Matter Most.” Teachers will be asked to read designated chapters per month and do a reflection by blogging and make an effort to read other blogs from colleagues. At this time, I am not sure whether to have teachers reflect with in their perspective teams or reflect with other teams. I will collect some data from the participation on the blogging.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
My Favorite Passion
My favorite of the nine Passions is Leadership. There are Five Practices of Exemplary Leadership:
Model the Way.
Inspire A Shared Vision.
Challenge the Process.
Enable Others to Act.
Encourage the Heart.
Of the Five Practices, “Encourage the Heart” is my favorite. In order to remain Passionate in our profession, we must encourage our Hearts and encourage the Hearts of our teachers, children and all whose life’s we touch.
Fichman, Nancy Dana (2009). Leading with passion and knowledge: The principal as action Researcher. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Passions
In our quest for Lifelong Learning, we will lay the foundation for our journey. What kind of inquiry should I do? How will I come up with my “wonderings?”
I started to reflect on last school year and I thought about some of the concerns and issues we faced. Keeping in mind, the ”What if…?“I wonder …,” and “I think…”
There are nine passions, but they do overlap (Venn Diagram). I have to admit, that as I started going through the nine passions, I started feeling a little over whelmed. So I paused “reflected,” and “refueled.”
Passion 1 Staff Development, I love this quotation from Barth:
“Nothing within a school has more impact upon students in terms of skills development, self-confidence, or classroom behavior than the personal and professional growth of their teachers. When teachers examine, question, reflect on their ideas and develop new practices that lead towards their ideals, students are alive. When teachers stop growing, so do their students (Barth, 1981, p. 145).”
As future administrators, we will face the daily challenges to impact student’s and teacher’s learning. Foremost, we must take charge of our own learning and as the “head learner,” we must lead by modeling the process to faculty, staff, and students.
Effective and successful principals us action research as a tool to make effective changes, make improvements, produce academic achievement and promote “Lifelong Learning.” Most important, all nine passions have a common factor “student achievement.”
Barth, R. (1981). The principal as staff developer. Journal of Education, 163(2), 144-162.
I started to reflect on last school year and I thought about some of the concerns and issues we faced. Keeping in mind, the ”What if…?“I wonder …,” and “I think…”
There are nine passions, but they do overlap (Venn Diagram). I have to admit, that as I started going through the nine passions, I started feeling a little over whelmed. So I paused “reflected,” and “refueled.”
Passion 1 Staff Development, I love this quotation from Barth:
“Nothing within a school has more impact upon students in terms of skills development, self-confidence, or classroom behavior than the personal and professional growth of their teachers. When teachers examine, question, reflect on their ideas and develop new practices that lead towards their ideals, students are alive. When teachers stop growing, so do their students (Barth, 1981, p. 145).”
As future administrators, we will face the daily challenges to impact student’s and teacher’s learning. Foremost, we must take charge of our own learning and as the “head learner,” we must lead by modeling the process to faculty, staff, and students.
Effective and successful principals us action research as a tool to make effective changes, make improvements, produce academic achievement and promote “Lifelong Learning.” Most important, all nine passions have a common factor “student achievement.”
Barth, R. (1981). The principal as staff developer. Journal of Education, 163(2), 144-162.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Blogging 21st Century Communication
What a magnificent way of being able to communicate our thoughts with individuals in our state, across the country and abroad.
I was thinking about how our class discussion board has evolved into a network of exchanging, and sharing ideas. With this, I got a good feeling inside of me about the way colleagues should interact and learn from each other. There are no “put downs,” we respect and contribute to others thoughts. Blogging is the same way. It is a great to collaborate with other professionals that have similar concerns and issues that we face in our daily challenges of educating our children.
Even though there is distance between all of our classmates and colleagues, I feel a sense of closeness, a relationship of family. What do you think? Would this be a part or aspect of having a positive culture at our school?
I was thinking about how our class discussion board has evolved into a network of exchanging, and sharing ideas. With this, I got a good feeling inside of me about the way colleagues should interact and learn from each other. There are no “put downs,” we respect and contribute to others thoughts. Blogging is the same way. It is a great to collaborate with other professionals that have similar concerns and issues that we face in our daily challenges of educating our children.
Even though there is distance between all of our classmates and colleagues, I feel a sense of closeness, a relationship of family. What do you think? Would this be a part or aspect of having a positive culture at our school?
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Lifelong Learning
Action Research/Inquiry
When I saw the word “Research” I felt a little intimidated and had an unsettled feeling inside of me. I don’t think I would have felt this way, had I received my textbooks early this week. As I read our course syllabus, and watching the class video, I grew confident about the class. I have to thank Holly for writing her blog because reading her blog made me feel more confident and self assured.
I also did some reflecting about issues that we face at my school. Some of the issues that I thought about were block schedules, school culture, and teacher and student morale. Our mathematics depart has been trying to convince our principal to change to mathematics everyday. The mathematics teachers believe that we can have more of a positive impact on student achievement if we see our student’s everyday for a shorter class period (50 minutes versus 80 minutes). Our principal has told us to show her some data to back up our belief. Well, now I am excited about the Action Research model because I will be able to this and more through our action research/inquiry method.
Even though, block schedule is an important issue concerning our campus, I strongly believe that creating a positive school culture is of utmost importance. I want to focus on this issue because I believe that our campus will improve in many areas such as attendance, student achievement (students scoring better on mathematics and other core subjects), decrease behavior problems, have more Pre-Ap classes etc.
Our TEA rating for 2009-2010 is “Recognized.” It is evident that our campus is accomplishing some success, but not enough to make our campus “Exemplary.” Our campus has never received a rating of “Exemplary.”
Having a positive school culture would be a “win/win” situation for all, because teachers improve their teaching and how they feel about themselves and families. All participants are affected in positive ways. This is the “reciprocal” relationship between school climate and family involvement that will be evident at our campus.
We have made big strides at our campus, but I want to see higher test scores in all subjects and high teacher morale. I truly believe this can happen with positive school culture.
With this course, we will possess the skills to conduct action research that will improve our campuses. Lastly, as future leaders, we will be able to justify our actions through the research/inquiry method.
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