Action Research Plan

GOAL: Find out how effective our district's and school's teacher mentoring program is and use the findings to make sure the program is being used to its full potential.

Action Step(s)	Person(s) Responsible	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
1. Interview the person in charge of the district's teacher mentoring program. Interview neighboring districts and get information about their teacher mentoring programs Interview my school's administrator in charge of all first year teachers and their mentors. Interview neighboring school administrators and get information about their mentoring programs.	Ofelia Pena	August 2-27, 2010	All the people in charge of the mentoring programs in their district or at their schools. Any paperwork, percentages and numbers of the success of their programs.	Look at what has worked and has not worked for each of their programs and the percentages and numbers of retention of teachers at their districts and individual schools.
2. Get all paperwork and information that will be needed for the first meeting with the first year teachers. Have the first meeting with all the first year teachers and let them know what goals we would like to accomplish with these weekly meetings. We will go over the calendar and discuss important dates, have them fill out their contact information so that I can keep them updated by e-mail or phone.	Ofelia Pena and Gracie Garza, Asst. Principal in charge of the school's mentoring program	August 20, 2010	Sign-in sheet, agenda, calendar of meetings, contact information sheets, goals of what we would like to accomplish with these meetings	Have each teacher fill out a questionnaire where they will discuss what they expect the mentoring program to do to make them be a better teacher.
3. Meet with each mentor teacher individually and discuss what his or her plans are to help out their first year teacher. Give them each calendars of when I will be meeting with them throughout the school year and checking on the progress of their mentoring of the new teacher. They will also have deadlines of turning in documentation of what they have done in mentoring their new teacher.	Ofelia Pena, Gracie Garza & Mentors	August 23-September 10, 2010	Calendar of meetings, contact information sheets and documentation logs	Have each teacher fill out a questionnaire where they will discuss what they expect to do as a mentor to help make the new teacher learn and become a great teacher.
4. Meet with each new teacher once a week during the first semester. Listen to their concerns, let them know about what is going on at school; have them discuss what is working for them in the classroom and what is not. Bring in different administrators, counselors, teachers, support staff and get to know who they are and what they do.	Ofelia Pena and Gracie Garza, Asst. Principal in charge of the school's mentoring program	August 23 – December 17, 2010	Any paperwork that will be needed for the different meetings that will be held during the first semester of school	Survey will be distributed at the end of the first semester which will be used to re-evaluate the mentoring program for the second semester form the new teacher's perspective.
5. Meet with each mentor teacher individually every two weeks and discuss the progress of the new teacher. They also need to turn in their documentation log.	Ofelia Pena, Gracie Garza, Mentor	August 23 – December 17, 2010	Documentation logs	Survey will be distributed at the end of the first semester which will be used to re-evaluate the mentoring program for the second semester from the mentor's perspective.
6. Each new teacher will make peer observations of their mentor and other teachers on campus a minimum of twice a month.	New Teachers	September 6 – December 17, 2010	Observation Logs	Observation logs will be turned in at the end of each month.
7. Meet with new teachers and mentors and discuss the changes during the second semester of school. Distribute a meeting calendar for the second semester and discuss and answer any questions they might have concerning the second semester changes.	Ofelia Pena, Gracie Garza	January 21, 2011	Sign-in sheet, agenda, calendar of meetings	Each new teacher will fill out an evaluation on their mentor and each mentor will fill out an evaluation on their new teacher and how they believe they did their first semester. What worked for them and what needs to improve?
8. Meet with each new teacher every two weeks during the second semester. Listen to their concerns, let them know about what is going on at school; have them discuss what is working for them in the classroom and what is not. Bring in different administrators, counselors, teachers, support staff and get to know who they are and what they do.	Ofelia Pena and Gracie Garza, Asst. Principal in charge of the school's mentoring program	January 31- May 27, 2010	Any paperwork that will be needed for the different meetings that will be held during the second semester of school	Survey will be distributed at the end of the school year which will be used to re-evaluate the mentoring program for the following school year form the new teacher's perspective.
9. Meet with each mentor teacher individually once a month and discuss the progress of the new teacher. They also need to turn in their documentation log at this time.	Ofelia Pena, Gracie Garza, Mentor teacher	January 31-May 27, 2011	Documentation Logs	Survey will be distributed at the end of the school year which will be used to re-evaluate the mentoring program for the following school year form the mentor's perspective.
10. Meet with all new and mentor teachers for the final time.	Ofelia Pena and Gracie Garza, Asst. Principal in charge of the school's mentoring program	May 23 – May 27, 2011	Surveys and final evaluations	The new and mentor teachers will evaluate the entire program by filling out a survey and final evaluation.
11. Meet with school administration and present findings	Ofelia Pena	June 30, 2011	Charts, graphs, documentation of the mentoring program for the entire school year.	Present what is working and what needs improvement to make the mentoring program a great success for our new and mentor teachers.

Week 2 Reflection

It has been an interesting week. I met with my site supervisor and we discussed many issues that our school needs to address. The three issues that we decided on were the tardy policy, increasing parental involvement and the district's teacher mentoring program. She told me to decide on one and the one I chose was the mentoring program. When I first began teaching seventeen years ago, I was very lucky to have my high school drama teacher be my mentor. He was at a different campus but he always made time to find out how things were going for me and helped me out tremendously. Towards the beginning of the school year I was having some issues with one of my 7th grade drama classes. The kids were basically making my life miserable so my mentor teacher came by during his conference period and sat in and observed the class and suggested ideas on how to handle them. Little by little the students realized that I wasn't going to give them the upper hand so they just stopped being discipline problems and let me teach. They ended up really liking my class and became one of my favorite classes to teach. I moved up to the high school in the following year and many of those 7th graders joined drama in high school. They were a very talented group that became very involved in theatre throughout their high school years.
I have heard many horror stories from teachers that had a mentor but basically had to learn everything on their own. As an administrator, I want to make sure that I keep as many of my teachers every year. When teachers are wanting to transfer out of your campus, that does not look good on the principal. Having a great mentoring program will help an administrator make sure that the first year teachers transition into their new job without too many problems. I know that I am where I am because of my first year mentor and I want to make sure that the mentoring program makes our school's first year teachers feel the same way.

Using Blogs as an Educational Leader

I believe that the best ways an educational leader can use a blog is for reflection and as a way of helping yourself and other administrators become better leaders. Being an administrator is very stressful job and the best way to relieve some of the stress is by writing it down and reflecting on the reasons for the stress. Administrators must keep their composure and be professional at all times because they are the educational leaders of the school so the best way to vent is by writing it down and sharing it with other leaders. Journaling the ideas and findings they learn when they are researching different inquiries can help administrators in the long run. When an administrator uses a blog to journal his or her thoughts throughout an inquiry, he or she can always look back at the steps that lead to the findings and make adjustments. Other administrators can use the blog as a way to learn and also suggest ideas that will make the action research a greater success. To become a great administrator, one needs to always be a student and the best way to learn is from what other administrators have experienced throughout their career. Overall, the blogs can become administrative classrooms where at times the leaders will be the students and at times they will be the teachers but the best thing is that it will be documented.

Action Research: What Have I Learned & How Can I Use It?

What I have learned about action research this week is that I have already been lucky enough to experience and be a part of this wonderful concept and it has made me improve as a teacher and leader. I just never knew the proper name for this type of work. Being a better teacher and leader has given my students the opportunity to learn in different ways and succeed in my classroom and extra curricular activities. I have been a member of the leadership team at my school throughout my teaching career and it has allowed me to research and make decisions on different programs that our school has wanted to use to improve student achievement.

For the past five years my high school has been a part of the High School Re-Design Program which breaks up our school into small learning communities. We are a large school and having small learning communities has brought our different communities closer because we are a smaller group of teachers concentrating on a smaller group of students. I have been a small learning community coordinator for the past three years and have made sure that all my teachers, together with our assistant principal and counselor, work as a team to accomplish what is best for ourselves and our students. My community meets twice a week and during that time we reflect on the ways that we can lead and teach so that our students can learn in our classrooms. We have researched and learned about the different ways our students learn and how we should teach them. The best thing about using action research is that my teachers are given the power to make decisions using the information they have researched and make changes. They are able to look at their past knowledge and adapt it to the new information, and they are always given the opportunity to ask questions so that they can better understand the research. Once they have determined the issues and/or problems to be researched, they are expected to develop and implement the inquiry.

During this next school year, my goal is to teach them what I have learned about action research and use it as much as possible in my weekly meetings with my teachers in my small learning community. I want them to take ownership of what they do in and out of the classroom and become a stronger team. All administrators and teachers should want to have a hand in action research because to become better educators, we must learn from our mistakes and work as a team to help our students achieve overall success.