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.