Action Research and Blogs, Wk 1 Assign., Part 3

Action research is the way to go for educators.  It is a reflective approach that improves learning and performance.  It captures differences across classrooms, schools, and communities.  It is not focused on the knowledge of an outside expert; therefore, it leads to real change in schools.  As a principal, I will make it regular practice by making it part of my schedule.  I will block an hour twice a week for reflection and inquiry and simply read or collect data about a particular issue.  I will also make inquiry part of my leadership team meetings to ensure that they learn and that it becomes common practice.  Then, we will train our PLCs (Professional Learning Communities) to do the same.  We need to be able to work as a team because this way we learn and accomplish more.  Through practice, we can identify our school issues and talk to our teachers, students, and parents to make improvements looking at a few specific areas at a time.  By working together, our staff will feel a sense of ownership and we will establish a better relationship with our community.

I would like to do my action research on a specific area of RTI (Response to Intervention).  I would like to either take a look at attendance or focus on decreasing the freshmen dropout rate.  For attendance, I could develop a survey for students to take and see what type of issues are preventing them from attending school.  Then we could work on these issues to keep them in school and help them succeed.  For decreasing the failure rate for freshmen, I could look at what is currently being done and see how students are responding.  I could develop a survey too to see what they like or don't like about different programs and what they would like to have available to them that would truly help them succeed.  Then, I could show the data to my principal and help implement a plan that could improve attendance and/or decrease failure rate for freshmen.  There are so many ways in which action research can help.  Why wait for an outsider to tell us what to do?  Why try to implement a plan that was designed for a different school?  We as educators can take charge and collaborate to improve our schools.

Leaders can use blogs to reflect and get ideas from other professionals.  Blogs are very powerful as they are able to keep our thoughts for us.  They do not provide limits like books do.  This is an interactive approach where we can combine text and images and get feedback from anyone in the world!  Blogging is simply a way for expanding our ideas.