Week 3 Reflection

I have begun to worry about the vagueness of my question. What is the relationship between student involvement in extra-curricular activities and success in school? Success in school can be defined many different ways and success to one student may not be success to another. In saying that, I do think that I have targeted a distinct group in the student population by including discipline in my definition of success. Another concern I have is should I limit my study to a certain type of extra-curricular activity such as band or athletics?

Week 2 Reflection

The biggest thing that I learned from the week 2 is the same thing I learn from every week. Man, I have a lot to learn! I am very excited about the topic of my action research project. This is a topic that I feel very passionate about. My mom is a retired teacher. She used to say "that boy needs football, more than football needs him." I think sometimes this is a very true statement. Extra-curricular activities provide so many things, but just a few of them are; Structure, that may be missing otherwise. Guidance, many times the coaches, teachers, or sponsors are the only adult male or female figure that a student may have in their life. Pride, many times students do not have a lot to be proud of in their life. Being involved in an extra-curricular activity may fill this void.

The Purpose and Significance of My Action Research Project-

The purpose of my action research project is to confirm the relationship between student involvement in extra-curricular activities on our campus and success in the school environment. At our campus  I am charged with the responsibility of the In-School-Suspension program. I am lucky enough to get to see a small part of the student population over, and over, and over again. Is hard as it is to believe at times, I begin to build a relationship with some of these students an am interested in their success as a person. As a coach, obviously I have a particular interest in student involvement in extra-curricular activities. During this project, some of the ways I plan to collect data is from the discipline list, failure reports, student schedules, teacher and student questionnaire's.


The significance of my action research project is, I believe that the results will show that there is a great link between student involvement in extra-curricular activities whether it be athletics, band, ag, choir, or something else and them being successful in the school environment. I hope that with these results, encouragement from teachers, administration, and parents to be involved in SOMETHING will rise.

My analysis of how educational leaders might use blogs

In the world that we live in blogs have become the norm. They are a part of the news, education, and expression. Blogs are used by administrators to communicate with each other for research or simply how they handled certain situations. Administrators are also using blogs to enrich student learning. Students post on the blogs and other students can read them. This allows students an outlet for communication and sharing their ideas. The most common way I have seen blogs used is for administrator reflections. It gives them a way to express themselves and discuss their thoughts on any given subject.

What I have learned about Action Research and how I might use it.

I have learned that action research is an invaluable tool for the administrator. It is different from traditional educational research because it includes the people that deal directly with the students. Traditional educational research relies on data or university professors and does not take into consideration the people that deal with the students on a daily basis.

Action research should not be thought of as one single event. It should be an evolving part of the leader’s daily routine. It is the process of a principal engaging in systematic study of his/her own administrative practices. The leader should also seek out change and reflect on their practice by posing questions, collecting data, analyzing data, reading relevant literature and making changes in practice based on new understandings developed during the inquiry.

 Action research can be used in many different ways in a school district. I am a part of the RTI (Response to Intervention) Team on our campus. My role is to take the data and identify the at-risk students. I try and pinpoint a common theme in their struggles and look for ways that might make them more successful in the school environment.