Action Research Plan

Goal: What types of support could benefit new teachers to become successful and have the confidence to continue in the teaching profession?

1. Setting the Foundation – Through collaboration with my principal and the site based decision making team; new teacher retention has been identified as a problem over recent years.
2. Analyzing the Data – Gathering data over recent years will help identify the retention rate of new teachers. Using interviews with new teachers and new teachers that are leaving the school district will be used to gather data to help teacher retention. The school district will also collaborate with neighboring school districts for ideas and programs to help with new teacher retention.
3. Developing deeper understanding – Using the data gathered in step 2, there should be other questions that will need to be addressed. Using the interviews and collaboration from other school districts, the new teachers will be asked to express their concerns for the school district to better understand the new teacher retention problem.
4. Engaging in self-reflection – As a principal I will have to be able to reflect on my decisions with the campus to determine if the new teacher retention problem could be addressed through my decisions. A big question I would have to ask myself and address would be: Do I possess the knowledge and skills to be able to take on the challenge of directing new teachers towards our campus and goals?
5. Exploring programmatic process – After self-reflection, I would have to identify some of the main reasons why our campus cannot retain new school teachers. With this process I would have to confer with a trusted resource to be able to come up with the best possible solution for this situation.
6. Determining direction – Determining the direction of this research project is very important. I need to be very clear on what outcome that I want to have for a solution to this addressed problem. I also have to make sure that everything that I do with this project is reasonable, such as timelines and the monitoring process. I also have to be able to revise and improve my plan as the project progresses in the event that the project is seeing positive results.
7. Taking action for school improvement - For this project I would like to include our site based decision making team in order to collaborate with for solutions on the outcome of my initial findings. Our district also forms a committee that is called the Superintendent’s Committee that is made up teachers and community leaders that help solve district problems through collaboration with district and community resources. Including this committee would be an excellent asset for this project.
8. Sustaining improvement – For this part of my project, I would identify the positive aspects of the results of the project. These positive outcomes will need to be addressed in order to continue with the results from gathering the data for this project. Finding and maintaining positive views for new teacher retention will be a key asset for the future teachers of our campus and district.

Week Two Reflection

As I reflect back to my week 2 assignment, I find that there is an area that really concerns me on my campus that I would like to research further. We have a growing number of economically disadvanted students that have been turned away at lunch time because of no money or paper work has been completed for their free lunch program. I may change my topic of my research paper to this after I look into it more with my site supervisor.
I really enjoyed the interviews with the three administrators as part of the first assignment. I learn a lot more when I can hear and visual what people say. These adminstrators gave an insightful testimony on what is going on within their school districts.

Blogs in Education

Blogging allows you to be able to communicate with anyone, your ideas or information. In the education world, you can use blogs to communicate with your students, administration and stakeholders. Blogs can be set up as a community forum where you can comment and express your ideas or feelings toward the subject being discussed. One area I do not like about blogs is that someone can express false information. Blogs are a very powerful tool that can be utilized by educators.

Action Research

Action research is described by Dana as: "the process of a principal
engaging in systematic, intentional study of his/her own administrative
practice and taking action for change based on what he/she learns as a
result of the inquiry". This process can have a great and immediate impact on how a principal is able to run his or her campus on a daily basis and also for future decision making. Action research reflects on experiences of the principal or even a colleague's experience to help better serve their campus in a positive way.

My research project will look into why my campus' reading scores have fallen on recent TAKS tests. I want to be able to reflect on the past and use these reflections to help determine the cause of the falling scores. Our campus has very successful teachers in the area of reading and they have been a part of our school system for several years. This trend of falling grades has our principal and our teachers very concerned and they have spent the majority of the summer trying to work out a plan to help these students become successful. Using action research will help me better understand an important area of concern with my campus and I hope to be able to reflect on this experience and use it in the future when I become and administrator.