Draft Action Research Project Progress Report

Developing Functional and Integral Members of an Instructional Team

In the past three years of teaching, I realized that there is a need for positive communication and idea sharing for the best interest of the students. I have worked with four teams in the past three years and below is a graph that shows the need of collaboration broken down by year.

As you can see, the need for support has grown. Looking at the first year, although the “need support” group is not greater than the “do not need support” group, when nearly half of the team is begging for some sort of support, the team leader should be concerned.

With that said, my goal is for each teacher to function as an integral member of the school instructional team and makes a highly significant contribution to the educational program through positive communication and idea sharing.

There is something called the Greenhouse school. It is where the school carefully cultivates the environment for the teachers to grow and care for the students. Teachers want schools with a strong instructional culture, a culture that fosters great teaching. They value schools where the entire faculty shares a clear vision of excellent instruction, and where school leaders focus on helping all teachers reach their full potential in the classroom.

Creating a positive, stable school culture is the key to solving this issue. School culture is always going to fluctuate with the change in administration. Sadly, the change in administration happens too often. I have been in two schools where it’s the principal’s second year and changes are happening to the dismay of the staff.   Educational leaders and instructional team need to realize that change will happen and will not stop, be flexible and push through. How can the staff maintain the culture without influence of the changes in the administrative team? The staff needs to look beyond the changes in the school and look at what changes they want to see in their classroom. It is up to the instructional team to make the school culture positive regardless of the administration.

So, first here are some reflective questions to ask. 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.

Setting the foundation is critical. A learning organization has a common purpose and focus, a commitment to a clear vision, and collaboration on the issues regarding improvement. Collaboration represents a systematic process in which teachers, support staff, and administrators work interdependently in order to impact their classroom or school practice in ways that lead to better results for their students, team and school.

First the instructional team will need to determine set priorities and standards of gathering information. This is where the administrative staff can help; the instructional team will need to gather resources and accommodate for the teaching staff. As a whole, set an agenda for the school year on topics that will be discussed throughout the collaboration meetings, urgent and necessary issues.

By taking action for school improvement, the staff will be taking the issues into their own hands.  Organizing committees or groups is vital; the enrichment team, specialists, etc. Monitoring improvement actions, do any of the activities need to be altered? Have any of the timelines, resources, or persons responsible changed?

  

 One the key problems have been agreed upon, there are steps to take to ensure resolution. After enacting the resolutions, there are ways to analyze the data. There will be three focused collections of data that include student assessment measures and scores, teacher interviews as well as administrative interviews, and a collection of student work and artifacts. In order to sustain improvement we can use of the CARE Model (concerns, affirmations, recommendations, and evaluation) will help examine and improve this project throughout the years.

A strong school cultures has better motivated teachers. Highly motivated teachers have greater success in terms of student performance and student outcomes. School principals seeking to improve student performance should focus on improving the school’s culture by getting the relationships right between themselves, their teachers, students and parents.