Lamar Week 2 Thoughts - Wonderings

I learned quite a bit from my reading this week. Chapter 2 from the book Leading with Passion and Knowledge was very insightful.   What I enjoyed most about my learning was reading many topics of wonderings that I can relate too.  After reading the chapter I even changed some of my own choices for wonderings from my previous discussions on our classroom board.  What I found particularily interesting were the wonderings surrounding alternate means of behavior consequences.  The goal was to keep kids in the classroom and out of ISS.  At first I did not think this was possible, but after reading some of there ideas I feel like they can work and am excited to share them with our principal.  I especially liked the idea of parents spending time with them in saturday school and friday afternoon classtime.

Educational Leaders and Blogs

Educational leaders can use blogs for multiple reasons but I believe the best use for blogs is to share ideas and to communicate with one another.  One thing I read in Nancy Dana’s book Leading with Passion and Knowledge was that administrators suffer from isolation.  This makes perfect sense since schools only have one Principal and they do not have many peers on campus that they can discuss their job with.  I feel like the use of blogs and technology in general can and will help principals in the future share ideas and success stories in an easily accessible and free way. 

Action Inquiery

What is action research and how might I be able to use it.

Action research is taking research to a whole new level and putting the research in our hands.  It gives us the ability to look in our own schools and communities, and to address our problems and concerns.  I believe that it allows us to maximize our time, take ownership in what we are doing, and involve others in our school community to work collaboratively to improving our schools. 

Action research gives us the ability to get the most out of our time.  Instead of reading about other school problems or attending conferences about issues that are not a problem in our community we can look directly at what is affecting our school community, find the data, analyze the data, and then if needed seek out research for solutions from schools that had similar problems.  We are maximizing our time and focusing on the task at hand.

Another great thing about action inquiry is that the leader and his/her team can take ownership in their research topics.  They know that they are real items that affect their school and their students.  By working to learn more about their problems and what can be done to fix them they will directly improve their school.  This is why they chose to get into a leadership position, so that they could help their school and directly help their students.

Last but not least others in the school community, teachers, students, and parents are more likely to be on board and to work towards goals when data can be pulled and shown directly from our school community.  It shows them directly what we are or are not doing well, not a problem someone else faced.  They like the leader are a lot more likely to take ownership of the situation when the can see that this is all about their school community.