1st week back to School and 1st week of School and Comunity Relations Class

This has been a great 1st week back at school.  I have really enjoyed the students and faculty at White Deer High School.  Although we have been in football practice for the past 4 weeks its always different when you go back into the classroom with all of the kids.  But it has been amazing.  This week of meeting new students and new faculty members has really caused me to reflect about everything that I have learned and am continuing to learn.  I still feel as passionate as ever about my action research plan and have tried dilligently in this 1st week to create a great classroom atmosphere where engagement is the rule rather than the exception.  I hope that this continues to produce a great environment and leads to great student performance as well.  I have also thought about the huge role of parental and community involvement in our schools and it's affect on our students.  There is always a profound effect from parent and community involvement whether it is positive or negative depends on the degree (high or low) and authenticity of the involvement.  I still have much to learn and am excited to continue on my journey. 

Time to Reflect

I am midway through the final week of the second course of my master's degree plan.  This week we were given the opportunity to reflect back on the highlights of this course in several different domains  Since this is my blog I want to share the greatest insight that I have taken from these past few weeks concerning blogging. 

This course provided me with my first experience in blogging and I very much enjoyed it.  There are many positives in blogging: I enjoy the comments from my professional peers as well as the opportunity to post my ideas and thoughts, however it is as a self reflective tool that my blog is most valuable to me.  The importance of this to me is best stated by Dana as (and yes I am a Harry Potter fan): 

   “If you (or any of the students or teachers in your building) are Harry Potter fans, you will recall that the wise teacher and headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, has the ability to extract thoughts and recollections of events from his head and place them in a “pensieve.”  At critical times in the Harry Potter stories, Albus enters the pensieve, sometimes with Harry, to explore these old memories and thoughts and gains new insights with each visit.  Journaling or blogging can serve as your personal pensieve to capture and store your thoughts and recollections safely so you can share them with teaching colleagues or other administrators and return to them at various times in the evolution of your inquiry, gaining new and deeper insights with each visit.” (2009. p. 88)    

While there are many positive aspects to blogging this reflective journaling aspect has been the highlight to me.

Resources

Dana, Nancy Fichtman (2009). Leading with Passion and Knowledge: The Principal as Action Researcher. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Consensus, Challenges and Sustaining Improvement

This week I have met with my site supervisor to reach a consensus on my action research plan, identified challenges that I expect to present themselves in the implementation of said plan and learned how we can sustain improvement within our schools.  This has been a very profound week for me as well as a breath of fresh air after last week, as it was not a task that I took lightly to create a plan for active inquiry.  I feel that each week my eyes are opened a little further and I can't wait to find out "what am I going to learn next?"  We also started football 2-a-day practices on Monday so it has been a very busy week but a great one at that.  One of the most profound statements that I have read this week is "in order for change to occur, the driving forces for the change must exceed the resisting forces against the change." (Harris et al, 2010. p. 94).  This just reinterated to me how change is never easy and we must make always identify if a proposed change is doable.  I found this especially enlightening because in a few short weeks, when school begins, we will begin implementing changes.  I believe in the case of this active research plan (although I know it is my brain child - I'm not try to pat myself on the back) that the changes are both doable and necessary.  

Resources

Harris, Sandra, Edmonson, Stacey, Combs, Julie. (2010). Examining What We Do to Improve Our Schools: 8 Steps From Analysis to Action. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.