Draft action research project

Draft Action Research Project

a. Title- Do we need to teach and treat African American males differently in the public schools?  Are they capable of following the rules and excelling in the classroom even if they are minorities? Why are so many African American male students being identified as special education and having discipline issues in the classroom?  What can we do as educators to make sure that all students are successful?

b. Needs Assessment- This topic was brought up in several faculty meetings at my school last year and our past superintendent was concerned about this because the number of students that we have in special education as well as the discipline referrals for African American males was extremely high in comparison to the overall student population in that subgroup.

c. Objectives and Vision- I believe that all students can learn and  with that belief no matter the students circumstances, background and cultural lifestyle, we as educators must find ways to get around the barriers and teach all students to be successful and productive citizens.  Finding out what, where and why the students are having difficulties in school and what type of help they need in order to be successful.

d.Kirk, David,  National Affairs, “The widest achievement gap” Fall 2010 and Fremon C.&Hamilton, S. “Are Schools failing black boys?” These articles and journals that support the need for my research.

e. I feel like communicating your vision is by making others believe what you saying and seeing the passion there is behind it.  I feel like people are in education because they want to make a difference in a person’s life so if we can figure out a way how to reach a struggling student than a vision will be accomplished.

f. I think making everyone aware of this concern on the campus and educating them on cultural diversity and differences would be the first thing I would do.  After enlighten everyone then we would find strategies and ways to improve relationships and teaching methods for the struggling students. Bringing in mentors, counselors, school psychologist, behavior specialist, consultants to help the staff teach all students.

g. Making sure that the best interest of the students is the first of priority and people are willing to do whatever it takes to make sure all students are successful.  I see the number of African American males that are constantly in trouble or in special education classrooms for behavior and not being able to keep up with the grade level curriculum so what do we need to do as educators to change this trend.

h. This action research will help all people of the community because it not only affect one subgroup but all students because the time that teachers are dealing with behavior issues or reteaching a lesson because some students didn’t learn it.  I think if we can figure out a way on how to make all students feel and be successful in school no matter their cultural, economical or ethnical differences than we will see some positive changes in the school system.

 

 

Action Research Plan

Goal: To educate the staff on the importance of understanding cultural diversity and behavior of diverse learners as well as to implement behavior interventions for the diverse learners.

Action/Steps:

Identify the number of students that are frequently having discipline issues in class. Examine if the demographics of the students are those of A frican American, Hispanic, special education, economically disadvantaged

Person Responsible:

Principal, Assistant principal, teachers and students at Bowie Elementary

Timeline:

I would like to examine a 6 week period of students discipline referrals and then use a 6 week period to train, educate and implement behavior interventions with the classroom teachers for diverse learners.  Last I would like to monitor the progress over a 6 week period.  So the timeframe would be for at least semester term.

Needed Resources:

Discipline referrals

Documentation on the students behavior

Literature and studies about teaching the diverse learners

Evaluation:

The evaluation will be at the end of the semester to see if the number of discipline referrals have decreased for the diverse learners particularly those of 2 sub-groups African American and Hispanics

Importance of blogs

Blogs are very helpful to educators doing research because it’s another interactive way to communicate to one another about various different subject matters that can be done.

Action Research

I have learned that action research can be beneficial to an educator in many ways.  It allows you to research a topic of particular interest or challenge that you may face in your classroom, school or district and do research on it to help you as an educator.  This is not a research that is just assigned to you and has minimal or no relationship to you and you are expected to find an outcome and implement it in some way.  I think that you can gain many benefits from doing research like this because if you involve the individual that it directly effects than there will be greater chances that the individual will be more receptive to implementing the changes that are needed based on research.  In my seven years in the same school district I have worked in special education, five years as a speech therapist and two years as a special education teacher. As a speech therapist in my school district you can be assigned one or more campuses which in results I have been on 6 different campuses.  Each campus is very different and unique and has its own dynamics but one thing that I have noticed that all campuses have lacked is diversity in the staff members with a very diverse group of learners.  I feel this would be a great subject to do an action research for me and of great interest in comparison to my school district vs other surrounding districts.