Action Plan Update!

My site supervisor and another person involved with administration suggested that my action research topic might be a bit too broad so I narrowed it down to simply “increasing communication between parents and teachers.”  The work on my action research project is a little behind schedule simply because of some of the changes on the junior high campus.  We’ve undergone a pretty large administration change.  We have two brand new assistant principals, a new curriculum director, and a new principal.  Thankfully, the principal is not new to our campus because he was one of our assistant principals last school year.  He is also my site supervisor, so I’m very thankful that I do not have to select another supervisor!  The junior high campus was also closed over the summer due to some renovations to the air conditioning system so our administration was temporarily located to the district administration building.  Although I was still able to meet with my site supervisor over the summer, it was made a little more difficult to schedule times to meet with him because of these various changes.  This school year is settling down and running very smoothly so I anticipate getting more accomplished on my action research project very soon.  I’ve already been looking on online databases and in journals for existing research that will help with my action plan.  I have been working on developing a questionnaire to send out to some of the junior high students’ parents and I hope to be distributing that very soon as well.  I’ve also already begun some informal interviews regarding past communication and I am planning on conducting some formal interviews with stakeholders before the end of this semester.  I still have quite a bit of work to do but I am very optimistic and excited about this project!

As I had previously mentioned in another post, my site supervisor and another administrator suggested that my topic might be a bit too broad.  So, this action plan reflects the changes to make it a little more specific to just one area.

ACTION PLAN
Goal:  To increase communication between parents and teachers on the junior high campus.
Action Steps	Person(s) Responsible	Timeline:  Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
1.)  Look for existing research on increasing parent/teacher communication.	Jeffrey Denton	June 2012-June 2013	EBSCO databases Internet search engines Related books and/or journals	Communication with principal and other stakeholders to evaluate to see if anything should be done differently.
2.)  Interview stakeholders to inquire what they believe could have been done differently with communication last school year.	Jeffrey Denton	August 15, 2012-September 15, 2012	Parents, students, teachers, and administrators	Review responses to determine why it was unsuccessful and what changes can be made to increase parental involvement here and in other areas.
3.)  Survey teachers about what they believe could be done to increase communication between parents and teachers.	Jeffrey Denton	August 2012-November 2012	7th grade teachers	Review responses to survey to see if there are suggestions that could be researched to benefit this action plan.
4.)  Send home questionnaire with 7th grade students to ask parent opinions of what could be done to make communication more effective.	Jeffrey Denton	August 2012-November 2012	Parents of 7th grade students	Review responses to survey to see if there are opinions that would indicate why parent involvement has not been high and what can be done to increase it.
5.)  Interview leaders of other district campuses to see if their use of classroom websites has increased communication with parents.	Jeffrey Denton	August 2012-December 2012	Campus administrators	If it is shown that communication is higher, investigate utilizing websites for junior high classrooms.
As research is conducted in the above areas, other items will be added to this plan to facilitate the increase of parental involvement at the junior high as well as communication between teachers and parents.

Probably the largest thing that I got from this course was that there is a difference between traditional educational research and action research.  I had never heard of action research before this class and would have guessed that it wasn’t different from any other kind of research.  Personally, the word research overshadowed the word action in this course and until I started working on the week one activities I hadn’t even considered what it might mean by “action.”  The only thing I’d ever thought about with research was reporting your findings to others in a paper or something similar.  I hadn’t ever really considered taking the results of research and putting into use to create change.

One other interesting thing to me was the strategy of force field analysis that I briefly mentioned in my week 5 discussion board posting.  Kurt Lewin “theorized that in order for change to occur, the driving forces for the change must exceed the resisting forces against the change” (Harris, Edmonson, and Combs, 2010).  At first glance, this seems like common sense because if you’ve got more things against you than going with you, then it seems it would definitely be harder to accomplish something.  However, there’s really more to it than that.  Once you’ve identified the forces that are driving and resisting the change, you have to then understand “the circumstances surrounding the needed change” (Harris et al., 2010).  Once you understand the forces around the change, then you have the task of determining whether or not the change is possible and if it is, what needs to take place to put it into motion.

Both the site supervisor and one particular comment on my blog have also helped me in this course.  When I first began the week one activities, I wanted to do my action research on a policy that our district initiated at the start of the second semester last school year.  I had full intentions of looking into “bring you own technology” and how it could be used and how it would benefit students.  However, after my first meeting with my site supervisor, we talked and decided to go another route because there was already being work done in this area.  So, he and I decided that it would be best if I did action research on how to increase parental involvement on the junior high campus and increase communication between parents and teachers.  I was feeling pretty good at that point because I thought I had a good topic that was set in stone!  Well, anyone who has gone through this course now knows that it’s not set in stone.  We’ve learned in this course, with action research, you have to be flexible to make modifications.  I met again a few days ago with my site supervisor and it just so happened that he had another person involved with administration and an outside consultant in his office for a meeting about planning for the next school year.  I joined the meeting and my action research topic was brought up and we all began to discuss different aspects of it.  After some discussion, we decided as a group that the topic was a bit too broad.  So, my action research has been more specifically narrowed down to “how can we increase communication between parents and teachers.”  In researching this, the goal is to include communication using technology such as Facebook fan pages for classrooms, texting services, and the district/campus website.  The comment to my blog that I mentioned was from a Ms. Dawn Walker.  She mentioned the use of teacher blogs to post lesson plans.  I’m not sure if we will use blogs or not, but the possibility can definitely be investigated.  I had not thought of incorporating lesson plans as part of communication between teachers and parents.  If you think about it though, it’s definitely communicating!  Many parents want to know what their children are doing in school and having the lesson plans posted on a blog or Facebook fan page would be a great way to communicate that.

I am very excited to be working on this action research over the next few months and hopefully making a positive impact on my campus.  I also want to mention, that even though the part about increasing parental involvement was removed from the action research plan, I am theorizing (because I’ve yet to look into any research on it) that parental involvement will be a positive side effect of increasing communication between our teachers and parents of our students.

References:

Harris, Sandra, Edmonson, Stacey, & Combs, Julie. (2010) Step 8 Examining the Work:  Sustaining Improvement.  Examining What We Do to Improve Our Schools 8 Steps From Analysis to Action.  Larchmont, NY:  Eye On Education

ACTION PLAN!!!!!!

ACTION PLAN
Goal:  To increase parental involvement on the junior high campus and increase communication between parents and teachers.
Action Steps	Person(s) Responsible	Timeline:  Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
1.)  Look for existing research on increasing parental involvement.	Jeffrey Denton	June 2012-June 2013	EBSCO databases Internet search engines Related books and/or journals	Communication with principal and other stakeholders to evaluate to see if anything should be done differently.
2.)  Interview stakeholders to inquire why previous years’ report card nights had little attendance.	Jeffrey Denton	August 15, 2012-September 15, 2012	Parents, students, teachers, and administrators	Review responses to determine why it was unsuccessful and what changes can be made to increase parental involvement here and in other areas.
3.)  Survey teachers about what they believe could be done to increase parental involvement.	Jeffrey Denton	August 2012-November 2012	7th grade teachers	Review responses to survey to see if there are suggestions that could be researched to benefit this action plan.
4.)  Send home questionnaire with 7th grade students to ask parent opinions of what could be done to increase involvement.	Jeffrey Denton	August 2012-November 2012	Parents of 7th grade students	Review responses to survey to see if there are opinions that would indicate why parent involvement has not been high and what can be done to increase it.
5.)  Interview leaders of other district campuses to see if their use of classroom websites has increased communication with parents.	Jeffrey Denton	August 2012-December 2012	Campus administrators	If it is shown that communication is higher, investigate utilizing websites for junior high classrooms.
As research is conducted in the above areas, other items will be added to this plan to facilitate the increase of parental involvement at the junior high as well as communication between teachers and parents.

Week 2---Don't be scared!!!!

After going through week two's activities, I feel a little less overwhelmed.  Just the word "research" is intimidating to me so I was a bit uneasy about this course.  The interviews really helped ease my intimidation because it helped me to feel that we're not alone when doing this research.  We don't have to come up with every bit of it ourselves.  There are others out there that have dealt with similar situations on similar campuses and we can read about those or even contact those involved when doing our research.  Also, we don't have to be alone on our campuses either.  We can use our colleagues for help.  We can ask other teachers for their input and assistance!  Also from this week, I have found out the wide variety of areas that action research can benefit.  It really doesn't matter what part of the school.  If there's an issue, a problem, or a simple curiosity we can use action research to come up with help.

ACTION RESEARCH

Action research is looking into a problem or something you are curious about with the ultimate goal of making positive changes and sharing what you have found with others in your field.  You have to look at and analyze data, ask questions, read literature related to the issue, and review other information to help make those positive changes possible.  Action research has many benefits including self-reflection of one’s own practices, improvement of practices, improvements in teaching and learning, strengthening the self-confidence and self-efficacy of teachers, providing intrinsic motivation, and refining skills.  Action research can be a positive professional development tool for yourself and others.  Action research can be found in university coursework, meetings with the superintendent or school district, leadership teams, and professional learning communities as well.  Of particular interest to me is that of the professional learning communities because it allows you to work with a team that also includes teachers.  It is good to have extra input but it is even better to me when you can get input from those that are still in the classroom.  Although you can and should observe what is taking place in the classrooms, no one knows better about the inner workings of those classrooms than the teachers themselves.  I would love to, and hope to, use action research to investigate better use of integrating technology and learning in the classrooms.

BLOGS

One idea I thought of for educational leaders using blogs would be sort of like a newsletter to keep faculty, staff, parents, and others informed of what’s going on with the campus.