On the Brink of Action Research- Week 3

What factors prevent mentors from committing to the mentoring program?
What can I do, as campus mentor coordinator, to increase mentor involvement?

I feel like I'm about to embark on something that will truly improve teaching and learning on my campus. I met with half of our new teachers yesterday and I am so pleased with their enthusiasm and spirit. I hope their attitudes will reach the mentors and create a more collaborative program. Meeting them and absorbing their positive energy makes me feel even better about my data gathering strategies and how the data will help improve the mentoring program for them. Tomorrow, I will meet with my site supervisor and building principal to review the action research plan. Both of them are supportive of what I want to accomplish and believe in what we can do with the data we will gather.

My action research plan begins August 9th and will conclude in May 2011. I will begin by gathering qualitative data from instructional coaches and mentors regarding how mentors are chosen and what the individual department's expectations include. I will also discover the mentors' attitudes toward mentoring when I survey them during inservice prior to the start of school. Monthly written reflections submitted by new teachers and mentors will provide me with ongoing qualitative and quantitative data throughout the year. In addition, I will interview each new teacher/mentor pair once during the year to gather data about the issues they are addressing together, how often they are able to meet, where they meet (at school, on the phone in the evenings, email, etc.), and what factors, if any, prevent them from meeting regularly. I will conclude my research in May with a survey of both new teachers and mentors that will provide me with quantitative data about the level of participation on the part of mentors.
I will share my research data in weekly leadership team meetings with the instructional coaches and the building principal. In addition, I will post my findings and reflections on an existing new teacher/mentor blog every two weeks. As factors affecting mentor participation are revealed over the course of the year, they will be addressed and the effectiveness of the solution will also be reported as data. I will report my findings to the leadership team in May. By the end of the school year, it is my hope that we have a clear picture of the factors preventing mentors from committing to the mentoring program and how we addressed those factors. We will know which solutions were effective and which were not so that we can develop an improvement plan. The number of new teachers we retain at the end of the year will ultimately reveal the success of the program, and provide me with a foundation on which to continue improvement.

Action Research Week 2 Reflection

Week two of EDLD 5301 Research has focused on developing the criteria for selecting the action research topic. The reading this week, in the Dana text, was incredibly helpful in keeping me focused on what my area of "passion" is and how to pinpoint a wondering I have in that area of passion.I discovered that my true passion centers around staff development, more specifically the mentoring program for which I am the coordinator. Last school year was my first year as coordinator and I noticed immediately that the mentors seemed to be "going through the motions" of helping new teachers. My suspicions were confirmed when the new teachers completed a survey in April.
I complete Passion 1 Excercise 1 in the text to help me focus on what I wanted to learn about staff development. I replaced the words "staff development" with "new teacher mentoring" and I discovered that I had a wonderful mentoring experience my first year in the classroom. My mentor made a commitment to help me and he honored that commitment by meeting with me every Monday to go over the plan for the week, he offered me teaching strategies, teaching materials, and made sure I knew procedures like arranging my desks, fire drills, and hall duty. He wanted to help me. At this point, it occurred to me that I need to know why teachers on my campus do not want to mentor new teachers. My initial question was "Why do teachers at AHS not want to mentor new teachers?" After considering that my initial question was judgemental, I changed the question to, "What is preventing mentors from committing to the program?" I also want to know what I can do to increase the commitment from mentors.
I met with my site mentor to discuss the topic and research. She seems genuinely pleased that I am taking on this research project, which makes me more eager to jump in and begin inquiring. This project has given me the opportunity to work with an administrator on a project that will benefit new teachers, mentors, and students of new teachers and mentors. I am excited about the improving the mentor program and instruction at my campus. I finally feel like I am truly contributing to the improvement of my campus.

Action Research in Education

Reading the many examples of action research and personal testimonies by principals in the text this week has opened my eyes to the importance of getting out of the office or classroom and getting involved in making improvements in education. I’ve learned that effective action research takes the guess work out of campus improvement planning and leads to real, data-based decision making. Action research is a simple, yet powerful tool that every educational leader can utilize in the ongoing effort to improve schools. Any question, or “wondering”, is a potential research topic that can be studied and analyzed to lead to a solution. To me, the most intriguing aspect of action research is that by removing the principal or teacher from the confines of the office or classroom and into the source of the issue, there is a domino effect of change. Teachers, parents, students and colleagues view the principal researcher as a person passionate about making education better, a life-long learner who seeks knowledge, and as a listener who cares about the needs of individuals. I have been inspired by the examples of action research in Nancy Fichtman Dana’s text, Leading with Passion and Knowledge: The Principal as Action Researcher. As chair of the Career and Technology Education department on my campus, I intend to conduct action research before the beginning of school. The district mandated changes in many of the courses taught in my department and we are in a stage of rebuilding and restructuring. I intend to conduct action research before school begins so that I can determine the best way to handle the rebuilding and restructuring to avoid teacher confusion and stress. Interviewing each teacher in my department, looking at examples of unit plans and student work from previous courses, and journaling throughout the process will lead to a plan that will ease the restructuring process.

Educators as Bloggers

Blogging is an effective public relations tool for educational leaders to use to reach colleagues, community, parents, teachers, and students. Regardless of the weblog audience, the goals of informing and learning from reader comments are the same. Blogging news about campus activities and events is an excellent way to reach parents, potential students, and community members. A principal blog that documents campus improvement such as standardized test scores or building improvement will be valuable information for district administration, colleagues, teachers, community, and parents. Educational leaders may also choose to use blogging as a way of gathering feedback from stakeholders on issues facing the campus or district. Regardless of the way blogging is used, it creates an open door for the exchange of ideas between the school and the community.