Well, another week has passed and things have started to heat up, and I don't mean the weather.  I have been working as a CTC for the summer's remediation program and let me tell you, this is not an easy task.  We did however get a break from the 15 tests originally planned for EOC when House Bill 5 was passed.  However, having to do both TAKS and STAAR rosters, cross-references, yada yada yada, has made this an experience I wouldn't want to wish on anyone.  All this while still trying to maintain my classwork and other time consuming projects around the house.  I'm not asking for any sympathy (unless you want to give some..hehe), rather just letting you know how demanding this administrative journey is going to be.  With that being said, let me tell you a little about where I am with this research.
Many of you have given some great insight here and on the BB and I truly appreciate it.  You have given me some ideas that I have already posed to my site supervisor.  Websites that have many ideas and thoughts have been shared and I plan on perusing these quite regularly to help me in this venture. 
I started by talking to my principal about getting the discipline committee involved, and to my surprise we did not have a discipline committee.  Yep, now we know why the discipline and lack thereof could be running the climate of our campus.  So, as you guessed it, I am now the new Discipline Committee Chairman!  Yipee (tongue in check) I have been challenged with creating a committee to help alleviate our discipline problems.  Someone mentioned to me in one of my blogs to work with our Attendance Officer.  Luckily, we do have one of those and I was encouraged by my principal to include him on our discipline committee.  Suggestions of some teachers were given and we discussed their involvement, however we were a little in disagreement at first over these potential members.  I know them more than my principal does and in a different manner, mainly because I see how they interact with the students on a daily basis in the hallways.  I did explain my hesitancy at asking them to join, because they are one way for the administration and then completely different when no one is around.  Once we worked through these characteristics he explained that it is sometimes a good idea as a leader to include all these different paths in an effort to see where they are coming from.  He mentioned that we are going to have different ways of handling things, but if we are on the same train we should still be able to reach our goal.  I then saw that point of view as an opportunity to pick their brains and see where they are coming from.  That should be really interesting.
I was able to see our tardy data over the last couple of years and I was more than astounded at how poorly it was managed, and how there was not enough deterrent factor built into the computer program used to monitor these tardies.  We discussed some solutions that I have received here in the blogs and also on BB and he was really receptive.  I will however need some more ideas from my classmates, because in an effort to explain the Saturday work detention, as mentioned by one of my blogging followers, my principal thought it would be a better idea to have them do an after school detention.  I am a little reticent to this idea because it doesn't really make the parents an active or involved solution.  Saturday detention/work duty is more of an inconvenience to the parents which in turn makes the students a little more cautious to their antics during the school day.  Involving the parents in this manner would make them aware and accountable for their student's actions which then empowers the parent to be more in control of the students. 
With school approaching quickly, I have a big task ahead of me to produce this start of school package to include the parents, teachers, administrators and students.  Any ideas from you guys will be wonderful.

I will sign off for now, but as you can see it is going to be a JOURNEY!

Good Day Mates! I am including my Action Research Template for this week's assignment.  This is the part from Section 2 that I need you guys to look at and make suggestions on so I can review them and then make the changes to put into Section 3.  Collaboration will be great since we have never done this before.  Thank you so much for your help.

Action Steps	Person(s) Responsible	Timeline:      Start/ End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
Survey	Discipline Committee	Summer and During In-Service First of Year	Surveys Manpower to compile data	Collected survey results from the departments committee members
Identify common target areas	Discipline Committee	Summer and During In-Service First of Year	Committee members	Come to a consensus on the identified target area
Research	Discipline Committee Chair	One day	Money for training.  Trainer and training information	Did the seminar give us enough information to develop a plan?
Develop plan and procedures	Discipline Committee	3 days   Day of training and 2 days to write procedures	Manpower to develop a plan	Have an initial draft of our procedures
Present the proposed procedures for staff input	Discipline Committee	1 hour during staff development	Presentation materials, Survey sheets	Received input from all departments concerning the procedures
Finalize Procedures	Discipline Committee	2 hours	Completed survey sheets	Have a final draft of our tardy procedures
Train staff	Discipline Committee	2 hours during staff development	Conflict resolution material, Supervisor Procedures	Have attendance records to ensure all staff members have been trained
Train students	All teachers and staff	First three weeks of school	Manpower to supervise halls	General observations by administrators for the first 3 weeks
Draft a consequence ladder	Discipline Committee	First three weeks of school	Manpower	Have a feasible, agreed upon plan
Collect data after implementation	Discipline Committee	Span the whole school year.  Compile data every 3 weeks	Manpower, Weekly attendance reports, Surveys	We will collect school data reports
Reflection	Discipline Committee	Span the whole school year.  Reevaluate plan every 3 weeks	Manpower and data sheets	Compare the tardiness rate data reports throughout the year and look for progress
Presentation of data	Principal	End of the year faculty meeting	Final data sheets	Final survey from teachers and students

Well this has been a fast paced week.  With me starting my CTC position for summer school and all the research material to be read, I have seen how time is a precious commodity.  I spoke with my site supervisor and we started discussing many things that will be ideas to look at in the future, but his word were very thoughtful, "keep it simple and do one thing at a time."  He loves that I have all this enthusiasm, but he cautioned me that I will burn out quickly if I try to do everything all at once.  I believe that he has my best interest at heart by saying this and now I feel a little less overwhelmed.  Some of the things that I learned throughout this week as I read and watched the videos, is that many of our administrators these days don't follow the same practices that we are learning about.  Many have forgotten the teamwork effort and thus we are thrown into a fire that we have to put out.  There are success stories in the readings, as there should be, however I am starting to wonder the practicality of the information versus what we are modeled at school.  Modeling what you want is paramount in not only the classroom, but administrators should be striving to do this for the faculty as well.  The district should be modeling what they want and the state should be modeling what it wants, but they then turn around and "ask, or demand" something completely different.  This is what has stuck out to me through various readings. 

I was actually very impressed with some of the ideas that Mr. Briseno and Dr. Lewis presented in the videos and I hope to employ some of the ideas as I become an inquirer leader.  The Gates foundation ideas sounds like it would be an avenue for me to pursue on many accounts.  I have heard of this before, however I had heard that they were instrumental in the technology part of teacher productivity from what I had read.  I think it is great that major role players on the financial front are taking an interest in the effectiveness of teaching, while allowing the teachers to strive to become better learners themselves through the data.  I just wonder when the legislature will start following the idea of working with teachers and not dictating the "data" in an unfamiliar way? 

Oh well, just some thoughts on what I was thinking about this week!

Until next time.....

After much deliberation and attempts to find data as specific to what I was hoping to accomplish with my research action plan on technology, my site supervisor and I have decided to take a different route.  I will adjust my focus to a different plan.  I am going to work on the tardy and truancy issues at our campus. However, I still am very interested in the technology and how it can directly relate to increased test scores, we just felt that there would be more data and the impact on student achievement could be monitored more directly with this action plan.  I will be meeting with my site supervisor again today to discuss this a little more and get some needed pathways.  I will post back letting you know what we came up with.  It is a problem at our school and I do believe it plays a major role in how the climate and culture are affected.  So, stay tuned....


I cannot wait to work with many of you in all of our blogs and get wonderful ideas.  Any help and suggestions are appreciated.