Looking back on my Action Research

School Vision: Successfully prepare students for college or post high school training.
Goal: To Meet AYP
Outcome #1: To meet AYP.
- Activities: Review student success whether they are early or late and how it links to later or earlier start times.
- Resources/ Research Tools Needed: PBIS Data
- Responsibility to Address Activities: Meet with counselors, associate principal, and PBIS/Academic Achievement staff.
- Time Line: May 2012
- Benchmarks/Assessment: Review data to see when students are more successful in their core academic classes and whether that should be a determinant in their state mandated testing.
- Revisions to SIP/PIP based on monitoring and assessments: More student based initiatives to improve student success.
Outcome #2: Student attendance to increase with the start times.
- Activities: Do a data review of campuses like ours with a late start time versus an early start time.
- Resources/Research Tools Needed: Review other discussion blogs, TASA, NASSP, Internet, and internet search data bases.
- Responsibility to Address Activities: Meet with the PBIS Coordinator and Academic Achievement Specialists.
- Time Line: May 2012
- Benchmark: To review if the increase or lack of student success is linked to a certain academic grade or to one specific area of the building.Revisions to SIP/PIP based on monitoring and assessments: Increase teacher involvement and 1:1 administrative involvement with students who have had trouble getting to class on time and lack the motivation to do well in the morning versus later in the afternoon.

When I started to review this course, I found it to be very overwhelming. I was overwhelmed with how quickly it went by, but not only that but the rigor of it. I sometimes felt like my students when I was rushing to get things done.

Working full-time and working on the assignments was very difficult for me, I'm not sure because of the difficulty or because it is in the midst of yearbook deadline time for me.

I have learned that many of the things that I hoped my school would have data in, they do not, which leads me to an uphill battle with the remainder of looking at my action research plan.

Looking through the Process

The process of trying to find an action research that I could actually research was difficult. I often felt that I was looking at too-broad of a topic. Sometimes I wonder if I am still going too broad. However, I am finding that this is a topic that other people, including administrators are interested in. I have found that talking to a lot of people is key in looking into this topic, and to look at data that my school already has on this topic. For my first two years at my school, during PBIS meetings, one thing that they shared was data broken down by periods, with our new system they are saying they don’t know how to do this.

I think it is crucial to see if we can find a way to look at this data. If we can look at this question and find a reasoning of whether this will be beneficial to our students or not is the ultimate question. It has yet to be determined.

Reflection on Videos

When looking into this week’s homework, I had a tough time finding something that I felt I could commit to as my topic. More importantly, I had a tough time finding something that I could narrow down and be specific in my action research plan.
One of the things that I learned the most is that this course is going to be a lot harder than what I originally though. I wanted to do a topic that would be beneficial to the needs of my campus, but more than that something that I thought was insightful and beneficial to my learning.
I really am excited about this learning process and learning about the benefits or disadvantages this could have on my students.

How Educators Can Use Blogs

As an educator, I believe that I could use blogs to help bounce off ideas with other educators or administrators. Learning from others is sometimes the best way to formulate ideas for my school or classroom. It can also be used as a tool with students to have them turn in assignments and create an out-of-school classroom discussion on topics or items learned throughout the week.

What I Have Learned About Action Research

Action research is a formative way for educators and administrators to define problems in the education system and create a beneficial change for their students based off of collaborative data and research. Generally, action research is reviewed by a leadership team who assess the situation and comes up with an action plan to be implemented by a group of teachers or the school as a whole and that is supported by administrators.

I believe that I can use action research in my course and that it can be beneficial to help me find ways to review data on journalism as a career for my students despite newspapers being a dying breed and there being a greater amount of convergence media. With this, I’d like to adjust my teachings to help students with a future career. I believe that action research does not necessarily need to be for a behavioral or academic success, but for the success of the well-rounded student.

Ideally, if I were to research this topic for my courses, I would like to get with journalism professionals and other journalism educators to define the problem of preparing students for a career in journalism with the ever-changing media methods. With this action research, I’d like to create a plan to benefit the students and change my teaching to prepare them for their future careers. This past summer I attended a conference in Phoenix, and this was a problem that we discussed. We all agreed that we faced an uphill battle for teaching our students for the future, I think if I met with some of the other teachers with the same type of demographics, that we could create a formative action research plan and implement new criteria and adjust our ways of teaching to benefit the students.