The Best Experience

Throughout my internship, I had many experiences that helped me increase my personal capacity as a leader.  Of all the activities I took part in, the most challenging and rewarding was serving as the PTO Liaison.  This activity covered a multitude of competencies.  It helped me learn to establish a vision and communicate that with stakeholders.  Learning to communicate is key to a successful leader and serving as the PTO Liaison certainly gave me practice in developing my communication skills in various settings and with various school groups.  It also helped me learn more about budgeting and the legalities one must abide by in order to stay financially sound.  Just today, the PTO officers, my principal and I met with the district representative in charge of booster clubs and together we all learned so much more about how a PTO should function.  This was a great experience because it gave us all insight as to possible changes that need to be made that so we can improve our all ready amazing PTO!

If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans

I started this last class late and am feeling the pressure.  I had planned on getting so much done today since my in-laws cared for my son so I could have more school time. I was looking forward to attending the web conference at 5:00 and had so many questions.  However, my mom was hospitalized and that changed everything.  Thank goodness she is much better now and is going to be kept overnight for observation.  I spent most of the day today with her at the hospital and I’m glad I did but now I’m going to try to get some things accomplished that I didn’t get to do earlier before going to bed. 

Possible change

I have been reviewing the data from my Tier I findings and I’m wondering if a new direction in my project is needed.  My project originally called to follow students through the Tier II intervention but my sample group is too small (only 2 students) and I’m finding that our school’s Tier I is still “under construction” sort of speak.  So I’m wondering… why would I move on to Tier II when we haven’t gotten Tier I under control?  Am I crazy for thinking this?!

New Learning

I had a day full of lots of wonderful learning opportunities today!  First I learned that although you follow policy, it is still a good idea to double check some things.  For instance, I used the permission slips sent out at the beginning of the year that grants permission for videotaping students for educational purposes as enough documentation of it being okay to videotape my students for this project.  When I talked to my principal before the taping began, I understood from our conversation that this was okay.  Now that I’m beginning the second part of my research project, there has been a change and I need to go back and inform the parents by phone call or in writing.  This was very confusing and frustrating because I thought we had addressed this fundamental issue of permission with the district form prior to beginning the videotaping part of this project.  This is especially confusing to me because some of my colleagues videotape students (also for educational purposes) and do not get additional permission than what is already covered by the district form.  It makes me wonder if I have to do the extra step because it is for my class instead of for the district.  I don’t know but the lesson learned was twofold: 1.) Email your principal a summary of important conversations (like this one) where important decisions are made and 2.) Don’t assume that a district form grants permission… go the extra step.

Update on Action Research

I have to say it has been a while because I hit a wall in my project.  The videotaping went well.  My colleagues were very supportive, despite being volunteered for the project. However once I started to fill out my rubric I started to get discouraged.  What I listed on my rubric was based on what research told me were elements of a good math Tier I and II program.  I’m having a hard time filling it out since some of the elements are missing.  For example, the teachers do not have lesson plans for their Tier I interventions.  No lesson plans means no listed objective.  When I talked with them to get an understanding of how they create their lessons, both teachers told me that they base it on what the student didn’t learn from last week.  They use weekly assessments that can be teacher made or come from the math book.  So the Tier I is more of a tutoring session for a recent concept rather than planned intervention with one set goal.  This is making it hard to record the data and I think I may have to rethink my rubric.  What do you think?

Getting excited!

I found myself in a very “interesting” predicament this month when I found myself propelled in time and went from the 3^rd class in the Lamar course schedule to the seventh!  This happened because I am a returning student so I had taken some classes before.  By now I was supposed to be well on my way to implementing my action research project but that certainly was not the case.

This class forced me to get my literature review done.  I got busy and found my research which took my project on a slight different direction than I had anticipated.  Since this class asked me to do a draft of my paper and has me looking at different components like how did I motivate others, get the community evolved in the project and manage my resources, it has made me think about things I had not even considered.  In some aspect I feel very lost like how I’m going to do the above mentioned?  Maybe things will get better once I actually get started which has been postponed until January.

At first I must admit, I was a little discouraged about this but it gives me more time to plan how I will coordinate the video recordings and have enough cameras to do that.  I’m hoping that having a husband who was in the film industry at one point will come in handy soon.  I knew investing in all that camera equipment would come in handy someday!  Plus, I will also have time to create the rubrics I will be using as part of my observation analysis part and will now have time to collaborate with the people involved to make changes to them before getting started. 

I also wanted to share this AMAZING link I found when I was researching.  To my colleagues that are doing their study about math (especially if it is for elementary and middle school grades) you can’t leave home without this one!  It is from the Institute of Education Sciences National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance.  The link is as follows: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/publications/practiceguides/.

Time to press on…

Awkward position

I am currently at my midway course, 5397, where I’m supposed to report on my project thus far.  Since I just took the research course last month, there isn’t much to report.  I’m feeling stressed and starting to feel overwhelmed.  I think I just need to keep my nose to the grindstone and keep finding my research on which to base my study but when will I know if I found enough sources?

I just keep reminding myself how to eat the elephant… time to take another bite.