LC Week 8

Margaret emailed me this in response to an incredibly long email I sent her regarding my AR project:

“This is your action research and you make the decisions. Here is what I think is the important question. When you created the no-D policy did you have the idea of multiple redos and student created rubrics as a part of the process? If not, when did you develop these ideas? Did they both come at the same time or were they in sequence. If, for example, you say I have always done student created rubrics than it shifts to part of the context of the work. But if all these changed, how did they come about? What prompted what?”

I have been feeling really frustrated lately as though I am accumulating so much data on cycles 2 and 3 (or what I had thought would be my 2-3) and wondering what to do with it all. With MR’s earlier comments on my paper (version 3 of the paper), she was seeing it moving in a direction that I was unsure of. I was picturing all my work in three separate but interconnected cycles. She was seeing all this work as under one cycle. At first that was hard to hear, because I felt like I have been doing so much work for it to all fit under one cycle. As we talked more about this though, (this is the glory of having a Skype conversation to talk out ideas versus just reading emails), I can see what she is saying. We talked about this being a spiral effect where one thing leads into the other-the ultimate goal of AR. I think the challenge will be to go through all the data I have on the minor cycles within this larger cycle and add it to my cycle one report. Here is the structure I think I am using now for my cycles:

Two large cycles with sub cycles:

· First cycle: how to change how I assess students: how to solve the problem with students who are failing
o No D lead (wrote about this already)
o Which lead to multiple redo (have data on this- need to add support to cycle one report already)
o Which lead to student rubric ( not sure about this- I have data on this with their reflections)
· Second cycle: change how I give feedback to make it more meaningful and relevant to my students, help Randon become more meaningful in terms of the feedback he gives- help him become a more successful learner.
o What changes in teaching lead to these sub cycles? (think about this)
o Student teacher feedback helping him become a better teacher/ learner
o Which lead to mimicked feedback
o Which led to blind feedback/ dual feedback
o Which lead to one to one sessions in writing
Through all of this I need to remember MR’s words: Everything you do is not your AR, your AR is not every single thing; it is a particular strategy you took, feedback or process you went about.
I am excited to finally be seeing some clarification on where I am going, and the support to finish all this work, now if someone could just give me some time, that would be the best present ever and you would have my undying love and gratitude!