week 4... 5301

Well this past week I had the chance to sit down with my mentor and discuss my approach to my action reseach.  It went very well....  We came to an agreement to just continue what I am doing and not to slack off.  The most important thing that I learn this week were the strategies for subtaining improvement and the way how the CARE model works.  With the strategies I found the one that I think will help me the most (delphi method); because thats they way I am approaching my research. I need to get the parents mentality and the way to do it is with questionnaires.  The CARE model really made me think about ways to sepaparte my thoughts.  I really liked the way it made you think how one wants the future to look.

Reflection on week 3

This week it was all about identifying and designing my draft action research plan.  After I was done with it, it made me realize how much time it will take to complete the whole research.  I just hope that there is a positive outcome from my research and not just a waist of time.  I do believe that if I follow this program step by step, my research and I will get some where.

Action Research Plan
Sergio Lopez
Goal: How can we get the students’ parents support on engaging their middle school children to understand the importance of quality in Physical Education?
Action Steps(s):	Person(s) Responsible:	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
1.      Discuss topic with principal and assistant principal	Myself, Mr. A.Z and Ms. Metzger	March 2012	Intern Plan	Creation of action research topic.
2.      Meet with the other PE coaches at my school and explain to them how we might have a solution to help us with our PE classes.	Myself, and participating coaches… Davis, Landua, Beckom	March 2012	Study articles and other visit other schools to see their PE dept.	Coaches feedback and active monitoring.
3.      Meet with the other PE coaches at my school and explain to them what the plan is going to be and how it will work	Myself, and participating coaches… Davis, Landua, Beckom	April 2012	Pass out the material where the coaches will be saving data.	Coaches feedback and active monitoring.
4.      Conduct progress report meetings (every 3 weeks) with coaches to discuss about data being recorded.	Myself, and participating coaches… Davis, Landua, Beckom	May 2012, Aug 2012- Dec 2012	Names of students that need help in PE.	Coaches feedback and active monitoring.
5.      Collect data from all the coaches and ask them what they think is the issue.	Myself, and participating coaches… Davis, Landua, Beckom, Mr. A.Z, and Ms. Metzger	May 2012, Aug 2012- Dec 2012	Data, names of students, and parents’ contact info.	All data collected.
6.      Evaluate the data from all the coaches and share with them the info when parents were contacted.	Myself, and participating coaches… Davis, Landua, Beckom, Mr. A.Z, and Ms. Metzger	May 2012, Aug 2012- Dec 2012	Data, names of students, and parents’ contact info.	Data collected and parent log calls.
7.      Discuss all results with everyone. Find out if the action research worked.	Myself, and participating coaches… Davis, Landua, Beckom, Mr. A.Z, and Ms. Metzger	Dec 2012	Data, names of students, and parents’ contact info.	Progress comparison with year before and with the local schools around.

Reflection for Week Two

Its interesting how an action research works and how much of a difference it might do if done right.  The main things that I learned this week were that there has to be a purpose to the action research and it has to benefit others.  To be honest, I cant see why someone would waist their time on it if it didnt involve those two things. 
Other thing that I need to get used to is blogging. This is the first time I use this method and its kinda weird but cool in a way.  Its like keeping a journal of my thoughts and ideas. Again this is really beneficial to leaders, we can all share our information.

Purpose of my action research

The purpose of this action research is to find the solution on how to get the students’ parents support on engaging their middle school children to understand the importance of quality in Physical Education.

The way that I am looking at it, the greatest benefit will be for the students.The students will have the opportunity to understand the importance of Physical Education from the educational side and also from a personal life style side.They will realize that Physical Ed is a school course just like any other course taught is their school and they will also understand the pros that Physical Ed will brings to their life.Parents will also benefit from it; they will be more involved with their children school work and the positive thing of this is that both parents and their children can work to together outside of school to create a bonding relationship.Physical Ed has something special that other core classes don’t have, and it’s being able to communicate in a universal language.How many times has a core class teacher send out homework that a student needs to ask for help from a parent and the parent has no clue how to do it.That does not happen in Physical Ed… The Physical Ed coaches will also benefit from this action research; they will have the change to be able to teach a class that has meaning to the students. Some gym classes are like being in the jungle, the kids are screaming and running around for the reason that students don’t understand what Physical Education is all about.It doesn’t matter what the age of the student, if the student doesn’t understand the course or just doesn’t care- it’s just recess to them.And finally it will truly benefit the school/district, this action research will help decrease the number of students that decide not to finish school and no getting a diploma just because they could not pass a Physical Education class.If they are taught properly the importance of PE at the middle school level, they should have no problems with PE at the high school.

Description of action research

This week I learned that action research means just what is says. In simple terms it is research that causes some action; I mean that the research being conducted will end up with results that should answer how to make the issue better or even fix the problem. Also that action research needs to be done at a specific campus or work place by its campus leader or a person at that location.  The purpose for that is who else knows their work place better than the leader of the campus.  One cannot assume that the other campus down that street is having the same issues that his/her campus is having.  So one needs to find and work with the issues that surround them.

 I also learned that there are different kinds of research and not to confuse it with the traditional education research.  The point here is that we want to find a problem and also find the solution on how to fix the problem. 
There is so many ways that a person can use this action research at their campus but the main way is to produce improvements at the school. One can find an issue and go from there- collecting data and to gaining insights into their problems.

I can see educational leaders using blogs to network and finding answers to issues that they might just come upon.  Maybe even to prevent an issue that a different school is having, so its not just for sloving problem as well for preventing it from having at ones school.