Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Reflection on Reseach for Teachers


The wonderings and questions part of this class was the best part. I was able to really dig into serious issues in education and I was able to look at what others thought were serious to them. At first I wanted to research the process and effects of strengthening teacher evaluation. There is a need for a more complete teacher evaluation to evaluate teachers more fairly and accurately. Principals need to go beyond the surface with observations and need to know what goes on behind the scenes.  Principals and teachers will benefit from a better evaluation process. I know some teachers hang their career on every word, suggestions, criticism that their principal or appraiser makes. It’s difficult to understand how an evaluator can give a rating based on one hour in your classroom. It seems superficial and a more comprehensive evaluation will really create a complete picture of the teacher and his or her accomplishments for the year. I also wanted to look into parent involvement in elementary schools. How does parent involvement affect student achievement? What are the best ways for parents to get involved with their child’s education? How can a school create a partnership around student learning? The results will positively affect the student directly as well as the parents. Due to the increase of parent involvement in elementary schools, the teachers, principals, and schools will see greater results. Targeted parent involvement to solve a particular problem such as poor attendance or behavior can also be beneficial.

After some discussion with my supervisor we decided as our first endeavor together, I will research the topic of school culture. School Culture - In what ways can our school develop a collaborative culture characterized by teachers from different grade levels communicating, understanding, and sharing expectations for all of our students? Teaching staff may not have a clear understanding of the expectations of students in consecutive grade levels. Cultivating a culture on campus where teachers can collaborate collectively about student progress and achievement is the goal. This research will mainly pertain to the faculty and staff in my elementary school which is Pre-Kindergarten through Second Grade. There are eight kindergarten teachers, eight first grade teachers, and seven second grade teachers. I will be teaching first grade so I will mainly be working with the kindergarten, first grade, and second grade teachers when discussing student expectations, successes, and low achievers. We will be working together to ensure that each level of students are prepared to be successful in the next year/grade. I will be new to this school so at first, I will be observing their methods of collaborating. Then I will suggest new and improved methods and strategies of communication throughout the grade levels. I hope to implement a new technique or protocol for meeting and discussing student issues. In the end, I hope to help create more open communication for all teachers and staff to improve the overall education of the students at our school.

Although there will be some resistance to this new plan, my supervisor made it clear that she would be supportive. Some drawbacks to this plan are the interactions within the groups can be unproductive. The ability to manage all groups and ensure an effective discussion on school and student learning will be difficult.  This plan is time consuming. There will be meetings outside of the working hours, how will the teachers be compensated, or will they voluntarily stay after hours? To prevent any negative attitudes towards this plan, I have to stress the importance of our jobs. This will create shared vision and outcome for all students, an open, trusting, caring culture, and shared leadership that develops responsibility in all members of the community, that helps people respect the need for operating for the common good and that both challenges and supports people through the change process. This is time to work together to support change and learning and increase collegiality with communication procedures to allow for knowledgeable participation, conflict resolution, valuing difference, and cross-gender, cross-cultural, cross-generational dialogue. Authentic partnerships will be created that expand the network and increase everyone's opportunities to learn. We will be able to discuss classroom and school environments where all "care about each other and help each other learn", effective teaching and learning strategies that motivate students, that addresses a variety of learning styles and that helps to promote life-long processes, skills, attitudes and knowledge of learning,  and finally assessment procedures that continuously measure students' ability to use knowledge in a variety of contexts, using a variety of assessment methods and a variety of assessors, including student self-assessment.

I have high hopes for this research project and I am incredibly excited but nervous. I will be a new teacher on campus and to the district. I hope I will have the support the staff expressed at the time of hire. This class opened my eyes to the possibilities of action rather than following and complaining.

1 comment:

  1. I am in the same boat as you in regards to being new to a campus and district. I have some reservations as to how I am going to approach the teams and get acquainted with the teachers. I thought that I might facilitate a BOY social -provide refreshments, ice-breakers, background on myself, as well as let them share with me their thoughts and concerns for the campus. This would give me more knowledge of the campus and the team needs. If you come up with ideas, please share!

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