Week 5 - Where am I?

As I began this course, I was not too overly excited to spend the last few weeks of my summer break conducting research. In Leading with Passion and Knowledge, Dana uses the terms “practitioner research”, “classroom research”, and “practitioner inquiry” interchangeably. She goes on to say that she prefers the term “inquiry” more frequently because it does not carry the same baggage as the term “research” does. (p. 6) I couldn’t help but laugh when I read that. The term “research” definitely did bring some baggage and many negative connotations to mind when I began this course. I decided to attempt to keep an open mind and see where this course and the action research wonderings or plan took me. I have to say that the hardest part was determining the subject matter I wanted to research. I felt that I had to analyze the whole process first. By doing so, I was defeated before I could even state a wondering. There are so many topics that I could research that I felt overwhelmed. It was even more daunting to think that I could not successfully analyze any of them.
How did I get over this huge obstacle? I turned to my classmates and their blogs and the discussion board. The discussion board is a great way of not feeling alone in this whole process. The only criticism I have of the board is the way it is formatted. It is not easy to read or follow. The different colors are great to let you know which ones you’ve read or not read, but the overall format makes it difficult to go through the posts. That aside, I felt better knowing that others were struggling with the same issues as I. These discussions helped me to narrow down a topic. The Dana text helped me to define the topic in a way that I felt I could successfully measure my findings. I decided to compare 9th grade learning-disabled special education students enrolled in co-teach core classes to 9th grade learning –disabled special education students who are in core classes without a special education co-teacher. I felt that by narrowing the student choice to 9th grade, which is where my campus offers the majority of co-teaching options in core classes, I could be more successful in analyzing surveys, test data, field tests, etc. I also decided to limit the special education label to learning disabled students. I did this because I needed to limit and somehow make reasonable connections between the two groups of students. I know that determining the success or lack thereof of co-teaching is going to be a difficult, but worthwhile journey. I also feel very closely connected to my chosen topic, as a special education teacher who will be co-teaching two different core subjects for the first time this year.
The most helpful videos to me during this course were the ones featuring Johnny Briseno, Timothy Chargois, and Kirk Lewis. As with most things, being exposed to real-life examples helps making the learning more meaningful and useful. I enjoyed listening to their personal stories. It gave me a chance to see where I should be headed.
I think that while I’ve researched many other action research plans and topics, I could spend weeks and weeks doing more of the same. There is so much information available on the web that it is staggering.
Finally, the opportunity to blog about our plan and our journey was so very beneficial to me. I do enjoy and benefit greatly from reading other’s plans and wonderings. Blogging will be beneficial to all of us as we continue on this journey. I would like to see a blog set up for each Lamar course to allow us to communicate more effectively than we sometimes can on the discussion board. I have posted questions under the “Help” topic before and not gotten answers from anyone. If we had a blog that we logged into daily during the duration of the course, I think many of us could help each other answer questions or come up with ideas in order to be more successful and give us that feeling of community we sometimes miss out on being in an online course.

Action Plan
Goal: To analyze what effect co-teaching has on ninth grade learning disabled special education students compared to ninth grade learning disabled students who are not in co-teach.
Action Step(s)	Person(s) Responsible	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
Meet with principal to determine who will be co-teaching and brainstorm ideas on how to proceed.	Lionberger	August 18	Definition of Staff Roles	Do we have enough time for collaboration? Document brainstorming ideas from principal.
Gather information from special education department head and diagnostician to identify 9th grade special education students who are labeled LD. Identify which of these students will be in co-teach core classes and those that will not.	Lionberger	August 20	Present Level of Performance of Students involved	Need to make sure we know what level the students are currently at to accurately gauge their improvement or lack thereof.
Meet individually with special education and general education teachers who will be co-teaching to gather ideas on how to chart and document progress.	Lionberger	During campus planning time before school starts	Interview questions to guide the discussion.	Document feedback and suggestions of teachers and develop a plan utilizing their input.
Communicate with SpEd and GenEd teachers to determine what day we can meet on a monthly basis to share data.	Lionberger	During campus planning time before school starts	School Calendar	Teachers need to have input and feel that their voice is valued and being heard. A common time to meet will allow them a chance to voice their concerns and share their documentation.
Develop a survey to gather field information and develop interview questions for teachers to chart progress of students.	Lionberger	August 25	Sample survey questions for initial process and final survey questions developed from those.	Document teacher feedback and allow for additional questions to be added or questions to be deleted.
Schedule two 30-minute visits for each classroom involved in co-teach and non co-teach.	Lionberger	During campus planning time before school starts	Evaluation and rating forms	Classroom evaluation and rating forms will provide information on all LD special ed students in core co-teach and non co-teach classes.
Gather quantitative measures of student achievement for all special education students involved.	Lionberger	As testing materials become available	Student Achievement Data, Discipline Records	Compare data from previous two years for each student and also compare data between two sets of students.
Gather field notes of all classroom environments involved.	Lionberger	At least 5 samplings throughout the school year.	Classroom Walkthrough Model	Share field notes with teacher involved and ask for input and/or revisions to clarify.
Conduct teacher interviews	Lionberger	At least 4 individual interviews per teacher throughout the school year. One group interview at semester and end of the school year.	Deirdre Bauer's interview protocol; Tape recorder	Tape the first interview to see if it is warranted to tape record all of them or not.
Gather documents and student work.	Teachers/Lionberger	Request 5 samples per nine weeks of student work.	Student Folder and documentation log	Share student work with both sets of teachers and solicit input on relationships and differences.
Gather information from parties involved	Teachers/Lionberger	At the end of each nine week grading period. A summative assessment will be conducted at the end of the school year that is more comprehensive.	Student, parent, teacher surveys. Reflective journals from teachers.	Review interview data, anecdotal data, and surveys to determine success or progress.
Utilizing and sharing information.	Lionberger/Principal	End of school year	All information and documents gathered	Determine the outcome of data collected. Is co-teaching helping out LD special education students? Share information with parents, students, staff and administration in various formats.

Week 2 - My Journey is detoured

Well, I thought I knew what topic I wanted to research, but when it came down to it. I have no idea which way to turn. I thought about campus moral and how to improve it... Really?? I'm going to undertake that? I don't even know how to phrase the inquiry statement! I floundered through many other options to finally decide upon the impact of inclusion and co-teach on special education students. I pray I've made the right choice. It feels so daunting and intimidating just to write it on the discussion board. Any ideas?? Please save me!

Exploring Action Research

Who knew? Action research is a term for what many of us have been doing for years. Well, I must admit I haven't been doing it to the extent I should of been at times. Action research is identifying a problem and utilizing research to bring about change. In our line of work, it typically has to do with educating students in an effective way. As a teacher, we develop a lesson based the course requirements. That's where the guidelines usually end. It is up to us to find a relevant and engaging way to get the material and knowledge to our students. When it works well, we use action research to make it better. When learning isn't taking place as effectively as we would like it to, we use action research to identify another plan of attack.

In my journey to become an administrator, I will be utilizing action research for many things. I think one of the first ways I will use it is to develop a Professional Learning Community. I know I will need to enlist the help of others in order to not only be successful, but just to survive those beginning months. By introducing this thought process to my PLC, I and they can develop trust and share experiences, knowledge, and insight to build a better school. So many choices and decisions need to be made from day one, how can I not utilize action research to strategize my plan of action?

One piece of action research is gathering data. Writing in a blog will allow me to reflect on what is going on in my school and document it. As an educator, finding a way to immediately document what is on my mind in order to reflect on it and learn from it later on is vital to me and encourages me to do it more consistently. Although blogging is fairly new to me and many other educators, it will allow all of us to gain feedback from our learning community and reflect on where we've been and what we've done in order to know where we are going and what we want to accomplish once we get there.