...After some thought there was one obvious choice
because all year I had been mentoring some of our students who struggle with
classroom behavior, as is the case every year since I have started teaching. For
some reason, the students I enjoy the most are the ones who other teachers
“warn” me about before school starts. I like the challenge and their
personality. With this passion being identified, I started looking for a
specific area that my campus seemed to have a need in for me to research and
affect the most change. In the book, Leading
with Passion and Knowledge, I found a topic that seemed to fit with this
passion and had big implications for affecting change on our Title I campus. I
started with principal Lynette Langford’s wondering: In what ways are out –of-school or in-school-suspensions as a
consequence for discipline affecting student performance? (Dana, 2009). I
also included working to find an alternative discipline procedure to just
placing kids in to In School Suspension (ISS) or Alternative Education
Placement (AEP). I had noticed that my students who spent the most time in
these placements grades suffered and often had difficulty assimilating back in
to the classroom after lengthy “vacations” from the classroom setting.
With the topic determined, I then began to do some
background research and found that my observations were well documented trends
across the nation. Throughout
the United States, researchers have found that low socio economic students from
non-white backgrounds are significantly more likely to receive discipline
referrals. These referrals often lead to ISS. As students serve more days in
ISS or AEP programs, they become disconnected from the school and are much more
likely to drop out of school when the opportunity presents itself, which is at
the age of 16 in most states. There are many economical consequences of
students not completing high school (Jeffrey, 2009). This certainly pertains to
my school as we have 64 percent economically disadvantaged students and 80
percent of our students are classified as non-white, based on our 2011 AEIS
report. To further illustrate my point, “Alternatives to Suspension” by Joel
Rosch and Anne-Marie Iselin (2010), tells us that: “Education research
consistently shows that high rates of suspensions are related to a number of
negative outcomes for suspended students including elevated rates of school
dropout, poor school climate, and low academic achievement.”
Some
concerns I do continue to have are with getting teacher buy in, finding time to
complete all the tasks necessary to have a successful inquiry, lack of success
with finding alternative discipline procedures that will motivate the students
to change their behavior, and coming across to other teachers as too
“Pollyanna-ish.” In my first course of study, I found that I am an Artisan,
which is unusual for a teacher. Most teachers are Guardians who are rule
followers and very black and white. As an Artisan, I get board easily and tend
to focus on the positive often to the point of annoying other people. I don’t
mean to annoy others; I just don’t see the point in focusing on the negative
because life is too short to be unhappy. Not that there are not times that I
get frustrated, but for the most part, I just choose to focus on the positive
and my students respond better to me when I put my energy in to praise rather
than punitive means.(Advertising plug for The Nurtured Heart Approach by Howard Glasser) This is one area where I think working with my husband on
this inquiry will be a true asset. With his being a Guardian and my being an
Artisan, he can help me to see things from other Guardian teachers’
perspectives. I think that we balance each other out quite well and will work
effectively together to affect the most change on our joint campus.
To
address teacher buy in, Shawn and I are going to facilitate a lot of
cooperative groupings with the teachers to get the input and make them as much
of this process as possible. I am going to try to get them to accept working
with all of the students in the target population, but I am going to give them
veto power if there is a student they feel they cannot work with, as this will
only be successful with their buy in. I will have to be careful that we keep a
large enough sample size to get valid data, while still keeping my teachers
comfortable with working with the students we select. We will not actual start
the study until next year so that the teachers can come in to the study rested
and with their batteries fully charged. I think that a fresh start will be best
to give this a better chance of success. This will also allow me to get to know
any new teachers to our campus as well. We do not have a large amount of
teacher turnover typically, but we do anticipate a couple of teacher retirements
this year.
Overall,
I feel that I have gained so much knowledge in such a short amount of time. I
am anxious to get started on my research inquiry, but feel that it will be more
effective to wait to implement it next school year. I will complete the necessary
background data before school begins this way I will be ready to go well before
the students arrive back to campus! I do appreciate how well prepared the
professor and teacher assistant were for this course. I felt much better
informed throughout this course than during my last course and was always able
to quickly get an answer to any question I could not find an answer to in the
thorough documentation they provided us with weekly.
References
Dana,
N. (2009). Leading with Passion and Knowledge: The Principal as Action
Researcher.
California: Corwin.
Harris
S, Edmonson, S. Combs, J. (2010). Examining What We Do To Improve Our
Schools: 8 Steps From Analysis
to Action. New York: Eye On Education.
Jeffrey,
J. (2009). Race, Gender, School
Discipline, and Human Capital Effects. Allbusiness.com. Retrieved from http://allbusiness.com/education-training/teaching-teachers-primary/12786638.1.html
Rosch,
J. & Iselin, A. (2010). Alternatives
to Suspension. Duke.edu. Retrieved from
http://www.childandfamilypolicy.duke.edu/pdfs/familyimpact/2010/Alternatives_to_Suspension.pdf
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