Final Reflection from 5301

This course felt like graduate school.

I am weary with the kind of satisfaction one only gets from a job well done. I still cannot believe all that I have learned in the last five weeks about things I knew a lot about but didn’t know what it was that I knew and things that I thought I knew a lot about but didn’t really know nearly as much as I thought I knew. If you can understand that last sentence, you’ve probably taken this course at some point in your life. Fortunately, one of my classmates said it a whole lot better than that in his blog. Before we all had our brains stirred like so much tapioca, Travis Patocka wrote the following:

What I did know, however, was that as an educator you need to always take a step back from your work, your curriculum and assess your student learning to see if your instruction was effective.  If something wasn't working out, it is your responsibility to initiate change.  I would look at the issue, whether it was students not understanding some particular concept, or something with higher stakes such as a class not meeting its' average yearly progress or AYP, on standardized tests and would create some plan of attack to implement change.

As I started reading the two texts from my graduate studies class through Lamar University, EDLD 5301, I received a formal introduction to administrative inquiry and action research.  What I have been learning from my readings is that the whole time that I have been making decisions about my school curriculum or how to address issues that were popping up in my classes that I had been following a basic form of an action plan… (Patocka, 2012, para. 1-2)

Mr. Patocka has been a sounding board for me throughout the course, and his eloquence in this early blog post said volumes. Action research is what we, as caring and devoted educators, do naturally. We do it because it is right and proper and how one solves problems in ways that engender lasting effects that enhance student growth. I don’t think any of us really knew that that was what we’ve been doing. And I know that I, for one, never stopped to imagine that I should document my work in the way we’ve been taught to do here, to formulate the ideas and discoveries in such a way that others might benefit from it in the future.  Now we know better, and I look forward to all the fruit I know my project will bear.

Another very interesting part of the course was the video interviews we had to watch during the second week. I learned a lot from individuals who have taken the road upon which my classmates and I now travel, learned from it, and arrived at some of the potential ends of it. I especially, as I reflect on action research both as a concept and as an implement of change in my own life, find an echo of Dr. Chargois’s eloquent statement describing the purpose that should be behind all of the research that we, as principal-researchers, carry out: “Is it going to help us increase student performance?” (Interview 2: Dr. Timothy Chargois).  If our work is not aimed at increasing student performance, then it is for glory or some other reason that has as much to do with reality as magic has to do with science. We all have a single goal in our business – to teach children. If our research is not pointed at finding better and better ways of doing that, then we are doing it for the wrong reasons and need to find a new and more appropriate line of work. I, for one, will keep that question in the back of my mind like a mantra for the rest of my career.  For every change I hope to implement, for every problem and solution I envision, I will be sure to ask whether it is “going to help us increase student performance”.  At the end of the day, after all, nothing else is of any consequence whatsoever.

A third notion from the course that I will endeavor to maintain in my career is the idea of the Force Field Analysis.  I will try, when I begin to see a problem in my environment and that problem is coming into focus, to remember “that bringing about change begins with understanding the circumstances surrounding the needed change” (Harris et al., 2010, p. 94). We too often dive into a good idea without fully realizing all that might be at stake, and all that might bring that good idea to a negative end.  By using Lewin’s Force Field Analysis method, we are sure to place our theories, hypotheses, and supposed solutions in the proper context with the awareness of the needs and pitfalls determined by and inherent in the environment in which we are working.  When I applied the Force Field Analysis to my own Action Research Project, I was astounded at all of the vectors I hadn’t even imagined. I was surprised at all the things I would need to keep track of through my reflections and the potential directions in which the research could eventually take me.  In short, this analysis was illuminating at a moment when I thought that I was staring at the very sun.  It is not until the lights come on, sometimes, that we realize we have been standing in a very dim room, indeed.

In short, these three moments in the course have given me more pause and fodder for reflection than I may ever know since each one, in its way, promises to keep me humble and searching for the rest of my career.  Mr. Patocka and the rest of our classmates will keep moving me forward and pointing me in the right direction through their blogs and through their responses to mine. Dr. Chargois’s words will keep me steady and dedicated to the children for whom we all give everything we can every day we can do it.  And Mr. Lewin’s method for analyzing change and sustaining improvement will guide me to the level of knowledge I will always need in those moments when I feel that I have discovered everything that I need to know.  These three drops in the bucket of work that the course demanded are but bright lights in a swirling sea of stars. I have learned more in five weeks than I have in full semester courses in the past, and while I hope that the courses to come will be somewhat less demanding, I wish this only so that my action research project does not suffer too much loss of my attention. For now that I know how to do what I must, I must move forward and do it, posthaste.

References

Harris, S., Edmonson, S., & Combs, J. P. (2010). Examining what we do to improve our schools: 8 steps from analysis to action. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.

Interview 2: Dr. Timothy Chargois [Video file]. Retrieved from https://luonline.blackboard.com/ webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_tab_group_id=_2_1&url=%2Fwebapps%2Fblackboard%2Fexecute%2Flauncher%3Ftype%3DCourse%26id%3D_51546_1%26url%3D

Patocka, Travis. (2012, October 8). [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://travispatocka.blogspot.com/2012/10/24-hours-ago-i-knew-absolutely-nothing_8.html