Any suggestions for the wording of the question?

"How can the use of incentives encourage attendance, promote academic achievement, and decrease discipline related disruptions in the classroom at a campus where there are currently no school-wide incentive policies in place for individual teacher use?"

We currently  have no classroom incentives. Our discipline management program is Time to Teach. This is a reflective process rather than a rewarding process. I think it might work better with older students, yet our district uses it solely district wide. 

I will try to have my Part 2 posted later today!

Week 2 Lesson Learned

In week 2, I learned that my original idea of having two committees work together to provide better student incentives school wide might have been too large of a concept. I am going to amend my action research project to something that I can do within my classroom, yet still pertaining to student performance, behavior and attendance. I have an idea to use a bead system. If anybody is familiar with Forde-Ferrier from San Antonio, you will know what I am planning to do. If not, the process is quite simple. Students are given a shoe string at the beginning of school. They earn beads for any number of behaviors or achievements. At the end of each six weeks, rewards are earned based on how many beads have been collected. It is a neat tie-in to math because students will have to keep a count of their beads and be able to figure out in future six weeks how many beads they earned. Subtraction will be helpful for this. I will be able to get local businesses to donate prizes on a smaller scale than on a larger scale. Who knows, at some point there may be other teachers who will choose to participate. My teaming teacher may come on board as well. Some will not like the idea that the beads are worn around the neck. Mine won't leave the room except for lunchtime. I am also debating whether or not to let both my classes participate. If one class did and one class did not, I would be able to have some data to compare and contrast as part of my ARP. PLEASE let me know what you think. I need to come to a decision quickly now! Any ideas or suggestions would be so welcome!

What I Have Learned About Action Reserach

The main thing I have learned about action research (or principal inquiry) this week is that it has actually been taking place on my campus for the past three school years and needs to continue in a district wide manner. At first glance at the material I thought it was nothing I was familiar with. Upon careful reading of the material for this week, I recognized how the components had been utilized on my campus the past three years.

Our outgoing principal made a lot of changes when he arrived on our campus. In particular our team planning periods were restructured so that all teachers who teach the same grade/subject have the same conference period and can all come together to plan during the day instead of having to stay after school for collaboration. Our principal would then throw out questions we had not had the chance to prepare ourselves to answer during these sessions, which of course made us very uncomfortable. While I am sure his research had some value (he was a doctoral candidate) the rest of us kind of felt like guinea pigs. We were part of the wondering and the research, but as the principal has taken another job, far away, we will never know the outcome of the research action plan we were part of.

Now, our central administration team could take a lesson from the principal. I believe we spend too much time and quite frankly too much money utilizing consultants from outside our district to provide us recommendations on how to fix problems ranging from discipline to score improvement. Several years ago, local personnel did the research and kept us going in the right direction. For the past few years it has been the outsiders. Finally, it would appear the concept of action research is emerging in our district. I just hope we have more of a chance to participate than be experimented upon as my campus has far the past three years. We will be so much more effective if we work together to solve our problems utilizing the steps needed for a true action research project.

I just hope to be able to conduct my action research in a manner that is beneficial to my coworkers and campus rather than making people feel like they operate under the microscope at school. My biggest fear is making people feel like people on my campus have felt the past three years. Hopefully there will be more factors in my favor as opposed to negatives.

Educational Leaders Using Blogs

As our society becomes more computer literate and connected via the internet, I hope to see more opportunities for blogging. As a teacher, I would love to be able to connect with those outside my school district who teach a similar subject area and grade. As a future educational leader, I want as many venues to collaborate with others as I can have. My district is relatively small and only has six campuses. There is only one intermediate school, one primary school, one elementary school, etc. While the principals on these campuses do some collaboration, I would like to be able to collaborate with people outside the district. The concerns of our high school are not the same as our primary campus. Hopefully through the use of this blog we will be able to continue to share after we are done with the Lamar program. I am always open to collaboration and suggestions from others. This is my first experience with blogging, and I think it is going to be a wonderful experience.