Reflection for EDLD 5301

Overall I feel like this has been a very great class that I have been able to learn a lot from. It has giving me the opportunity to sit back and look at being an administrator and what it means to be an administrator. I have been able to talk a lot with my site supervisor, principal, about different things I can do to better the school.

I have also talked a lot with my assistant principal and the counselor. My action research is going to be starting a mentor program to help students who are struggling with confidence and other issues that affect their academic life at school. The counselor was able to help me and give me a lot of ideas that I am going to incorporate into my action research. This class is great at showing that when everyone is able to work together and bounce ideas off of each other, a lot more change can occur.

This was my first class to attend an online lecture/web conference. I think this is a great way to feel part of a class when you are taking online classes. I felt like I was able to talk to the professor and bounce ideas off other students in the class. I think this is a great tool that we are able to use with the technology advances today. I plan on attending all the web conferences I can in the future because I really think they make you feel more a part of the class.

Another great thing I liked about this class was the blog. This was my first blog I have ever done so I was very nervous about getting started and keeping up with it. Blogs are a great way for you to get fast feedback. This class gave me the opportunity to hear from students that I would not have heard from if it were not because of the blog. I was surprised at how easy the blog was to set up and how easy it was to keep up with. I plan to keep up with my blog throughout the rest of my Lamar classes because I think it is a great tool to look back on and see how far you have come. The things I have posted will also help others in the future when they look in my blog, to see things that have worked and things that could be improved on.

Like with the blogs, the discussion boards are a great way to get feedback. Being that it is mandatory that you respond to two colleagues, you are able to get a lot of information and help that you may not have thought of on your own. It was very beneficial to post my response early because I was able to get more of other students responses back to me.

Overall I think this was a great class where I was able to look at a lot and get a lot of great ideas and feedback. I really appreciate all of the other students who helped me throughout and gave me different ideas. The main thing I will take away is that everyone can help while you are in administration. You can get a lot of information from other professional. By them sharing things that have worked for them in the past and using ideas that have worked will make you a better administrator.

Update on Action Research

I love having a blog because I feel like I can get a lot of feedback from people who are interested and following my topic. Many ideas are shared and people can provide information about their experiences if they have ever seen or done something like you are sharing. I had two people who wrote comments to me that I feel would be beneficial to my action research.

Meghan Van Vossen said: "I had another thought. Would it make sense for the recommending teacher to be the mentor? They would hav already built an educational relationship. A 3rd grade teacher could reccommend a student from this year and she will mentor them during their 4th grade year. Does that make sense?"

I think this is a great idea. I hadn’t yet thought of how I was going to pick who would mentor each student. Having someone who already has a relationship with that student could be very beneficial to building a good relationship and getting a lot accomplished early on. This person would already know so much about the student and be able to help them grow more than a stranger may.

She McCord also brought up a good point: “I love this idea. I have seen a model like this be successful at my former school - the students were chose based on data received from their previous year's TAKS/STAAR test. How are you going to pair the mentor and the student? And will the mentors be teachers at your school?”
I have thought about what if I do not have enough teachers volunteer. When she asked will all the mentors be teachers it made me think, they do not all have to be teachers. I could maybe get some PTO parent volunteers or other office staff to help if we have more kid applicants than teachers who volunteer. It will all depend on how many students teachers select for this program.

Thank you to everyone who is following and commenting on my blog! I really appreciate all the feedback :)