Update

I have been working quite a bit on increasing parental involvement since I last posted. We have already had our first meeting which went really well. The collaborative team I created decided to include parents voice through an exit ticket asking parents what information they would like from a parent meeting. We received a variety of feedback, however we decided to provide a meeting on discipline and bullying next week. Our initial meeting was provided in both English and Spanish, but held separately. We will continue it the same, but have chosen to push up the Spanish version and back the English version. The collaborative team has also suggested holding a Spanish version during the day. Has anyone done this at their school? Has it been successful? Well I am hoping for a decent turn out, but am skeptical as last time we paired it with our open house. This time we are offering 8th graders to pick up their final course selection sheets for high school. I am wondering how many questions parents will have concerning these, yikes.

Wish me luck!

Personal Vision of Leadership

To provide students and staff an inviting place to come to everyday that enriches their lives by creating relationships that focus on the abilities of each individual and how their personal strength adds to the strength of the team and creating learning experiences that engage them by providing the knowledge, skills and tools needed to reach their full potential for the future.

Update - as of 9/30/2012

Since the very beginning of school I have been working towards my goal of increasing parental involvement to impact student achievement. I started with the creation of my action research plan and with the support of my site supervisor I created the first parent survey that rolled out in our beginning of the year parent packets. I have been extremely successful in the return of my parent surveys. I equate this success to many circumstances. First, our school utilizes these packets as a way of getting your students schedule for the new year. In other words, a completed packet allows the parent to pick up their student's schedule, which is really important to middle schoolers. Another reason may have been the bright orange paper that was used, making it difficult to loose or misplace. Either way, I have received about 715 responses with a class population of 825. I used this data to present to the collaborative team to use in making decisions on ways to increase parental involvement. I prepared for my first meeting of this group and presented the findings, as well as presenting a few research based strategies we could utilize to increase parental involvement. I am currently working to find a community organization that offers free Adult English language classes and would be willing to offer them on our campus to parents. This was an identified need through my survey. I am looking forward to next weeks meeting of the collaborative team as we focus on how to get parents into the school for meetings and involve them in the decision making progress. Our goal is to plan for the first parent meeting. I am motivated by the excitement of others to pursue increasing parent involvement and recognize the necessity of collaboration through the experiences of the team members, as they provide a knowledge base that I do not currently have. 

Survey Update

Good News - I have received a good amount of feedback from my survey. However, I did not consider the time it would take to disaggregate the data.  From this data I am trying to determine the % of Spanish speaking parents to English speaking parents. The top three preferred methods of contact and how parents are interested in volunteering and then lastly any services my school can provide to the community. From what I have received so far about 50% of the returned sheets I received wanted to be involved in some way or offered a suggestion on how the school could help the community. Not to my surprise a large percentage of parents show interest in a Adult English Language class offering. I am looking forward to presenting this data to the collaborative group I have been working to form that will make decisions on what direction we should go to increase parent involvement on our campus. 

Suggestions to others - If you are considering a survey as part of your research and it is going to include a large number of participants you may want to consider an online survey to save time with data disaggregation.

I have included the survey below.

 

 Middle School

Parent Communication/Involvement Survey

Student Name _______________________________ Student ID _______________________

Parent(s) Name ________________________________

(filling out application)

Parent's Primary Spoken Language _________________________________

Preferred Method of Communication

(circle all that apply)

Home Phone Email

Cell Phone U.S. Postal Mail

School Website Parent Connection

Other (please specify) ___________________________

We encourage parent's to be involved with their student's education and the school. Please tell us how you would like to be involved in your child's education.

(Please circle all that apply.)

Volunteering (ie. Chaperoning field trips, school dances, helping teachers with copies etc.)

Joining a Parent Teacher Support Group

Being a member of the Campus Improvement Team Committee

Other (please specify) ____________________________________

At White Oak Middle School, we understand the impact a school has on the community it serves. Please tell us how our family at White Oak can do more to impact your family.

For example – Providing Adult English Language Classes

To be collected by the Assistant Principal's Office

Comments Please....

Action Planning Template - Post Site Supervisor Discussion
Goal: To increase parent involvement and determine the impact on student achievement and discipline.
Action Steps(s):	Person(s) Responsible:	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
Gather literature and previous research to determine strategies of increasing parent involvement	Burnett	8/1/12-9/1/2012	Professional journals and internet access	Campus Committee
Create Parent survey to determine parent desired areas of involvement and community needs that could lead to increased parent involvement	Burnett	8/1/12-8/15/12	Word processor	D. Tompkins
Analyze parent survey data	Burnett	8/15/12 – 9/15/12	Completed surveys	Burnett
Form campus committee to present survey findings and literature analysis to collaborate and determine best ways to increase parent involvement	Burnett Tompkins	8/20/12-9/20/12	Faculty and Staff	R. McAdoo
Gather data and Identify student target group	Burnett	9/1/12-9/30/12	Access to student records	D. Tompkins
Create and present survey to student target group	Burnett	9/30/12 – 10/20/12	Google Docs	D.Tompkins
Contact parents interested in being involved in parent group or volunteering.	Burnett Tompkins Sunosky	9/1/12-9/30/12	Phone/E-mail	R.McAdoo
Provide multiple methods of communication of various parent meetings through out the year	Burnett Tompkins Sunosky	8/12-5/13	Call out system, interpreter, text system, USPS, email	R. McAdoo
Implement strategy TBD by campus committee	Burnett Tompkins	10/12-4/13	TBD	McAdoo
Attend parent meetings to determine and evaluate attendance and parent feedback over time	Burnett	8/12-5/13	Interpreter/ calendar of events/ sign in sheet	N/A
Mid-Year data analysis of student discipline trends and interview students on perception of parent involvement to adjust as needed	Burnett	1/13-2/13	Access to student discipline data and time for interviews with students	Tompkins
Create post survey of students	Burnett	4/13-5/13	Google Docs	Tompkins
Gather & analyze pre/post data of student group including discipline and student achievement	Burnett	4/13-5/13	Access to student records, excel	Tompkins
Share findings with administrators and staff members	Burnett	5/13-6/13	Administrator meeting, committee meeting, faculty meeting	McAdoo Tompkins

Site Supervisor Meeting

Met with my site supervisor today to go over my action research plan. I feel much better about my action research plan now. My supervisor found it to be on point for the most part. Just a few minor changes to make. I will be posting my changes soon. I am even able to move forward and put my first survey in the beginning of year packets. I am just hoping I get a good amount of parents responding. :-)

Action Plan

Action Planning Template
Goal: To increase parent involvement and determine the impact on student achievement and discipline.
Action Steps(s):	Person(s) Responsible:	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
Gather literature and previous research to determine strategies of increasing parent involvement	Burnett	8/1/12-9/1/2012	Professional journals and internet access	Campus Committee
Create Parent survey to determine parent desired areas of involvement and community needs that could lead to increased parent involvement	Burnett	8/1/12-8/15/12	Word processor	R. McAdoo
Analyze parent survey data	Burnett	8/15/12 – 9/15/12	Completed surveys	Burnett
Form campus committee to present survey findings and literature analysis to collaborate and determine best ways to increase parent involvement	Burnett Tompkins	8/20/12-9/20/12	Faculty and Staff	R. McAdoo
Gather data and Identify student target group	Burnett	9/1/12-9/30/12	Access to student records	D. Tompkins
Create and present survey to student target group	Burnett	9/30/12 – 10/20/12	Google Docs	D.Tompkins
Contact parents interested in being involved in PTO or volunteering.	Burnett Tompkins Sunosky	9/1/12-9/30/12	Phone/E-mail	R.McAdoo
Provide multiple methods of communication of various parent meetings through out the year	Burnett Tompkins Sunosky	8/12-5/13	Call out system, interpreter, text system, USPS, email	R. McAdoo
Implement strategy TBD by campus committee	Burnett Tompkins	10/12-4/13	TBD	McAdoo
Attend parent meetings to determine and evaluate attendance and parent feedback over time	Burnett	8/12-5/13	Interpreter/ calendar of events/ sign in sheet	N/A
Mid-Year data analysis of student discipline trends and interview students on perception of parent involvement to adjust as needed	Burnett	1/13-2/13	Access to student discipline data and time for interviews with students	Tompkins
Create post survey of students	Burnett	4/13-5/13	Google Docs	Tompkins
Gather & analyze pre/post data of student group including discipline and student achievement	Burnett	4/13-5/13	Access to student records, excel	Tompkins
Share findings with administrators and staff members	Burnett	5/13-6/13	Administrator meeting, committee meeting, faculty meeting	McAdoo Tompkins

Week 2 - Aha!

My aha moment this week came from watching the videos on epic. If you talk to my closest colleague she would agree that I have real issues with reinventing the wheel. I have reluctantly learned over the years that it's okay to use something that is tried and true and just tweek it to fit my situation. I noticed in the interviews that most of them basically stated in their own way that you do not have to reinvent the wheel. Through that I realized the importance of taking my time during the literature review process and using valid and reliable sources. I have also been known when reinventing the wheel to take it to the extreme. So I will definitely need to stick with the advice of Kirk Lewis and stick with "practical active research". I will constantly ask myself the two questions he noted "What is practical for you?" and "What do you need to know to apply to student learning?". Hopefully this will keep me from doing more work than is necessary, and I can feel good about it because I am taking the advice of respected, accomplished doctoral graduates. :-)

Educational Leaders as Bloggers

As an educator at secondary level, I know sometimes I find myself in isolation from others in my content area. I can only imagine how isolated principals and other educational leaders find themselves due to the fact that they are the only person in that position on the campus or within the district. Blogs would be a great resource for these leaders to collaborate with other professionals dealing with the same issues they are. It could serve as a resource for action research. It's a way to gain feedback on the inquiry you are working through and to provide advice to others that are dealing with a similar inquiry you have solved. It can also be a place to find additional resources for relevant literature to read or possible strategies to try. Basically, it is a tool that allows for collaboration.

My thoughts on action research in action

Before reading the text, taking part in an action research project seemed overwhelming and quite frankly a bit scary to me. I now, however, have a better idea of what action research is and am very excited to implement my first of many projects. Action research is just that, research in action for the purpose of implementing proven strategies to solve  a problem on your campus for your campus. Of course, this doesn't have to only be on the campus scale model it could be used in your classroom or even with a whole district. It is a process that utilizes the leaders on a campus to determine solutions to problems they identify. The process consists of determining your question, problem or "wondering", reviewing literature, analyzing data, making changes based on what you have learned and sharing solutions. There are many ways I can implement my own action research. I can implement it as part of the campus leadership team and working through campus problems. I could even use it to make changes to instruction or classroom management within my own classroom with my own students. I am planning to use action research to determine some strategies that can be used to simultaneously improve student motivation and reduce student discipline issues within the classroom. I have also considered using action research to improve parent involvement.