Course Reflection 5326

I knew that most schools have a PTA as a partnership and that some students’ clubs have parents volunteer.  I also knew that elementary schools have more parent involvement but did not know why parent involvement goes down in the upper grade levels or barriers that keep parents from being involved in schools.  The only experience that I have had with parent involvement has been when I had have to call them to let them know how their child is doing or to work on an upcoming ARD.  This course is about the role that the community and parents play in schools.  I learned that from parents to local business everyone can play an important role in schools.  In this class I thought about a partnership that can help my school and I can make part of my action research.   The idea is about getting outside counseling and tutoring for my school.  I created a Prezi presentation on how my idea can work.  I can use what I learn in this course by removing barriers that stop community and parent involvement in schools.  By removing barriers I will allow more involvement to take place.   
Some of the web conferences were helpful.  If I did not understand one part of the week’s assignment I wrote in on the chat box and either the teacher or another student would answer.  Information about the ILD and PADS training was given and I notice that I have classmates that are signed up to go to the same training days I am.  I learned from other students’ questions things that I had not thought of before.  For example, someone mentioned something about the action research.  So I e-mailed my action research to the course professor to get feedback. 

AR Project Summary 5326

I started by giving an introduction/background where I stated problems that my school has been having.  Then I go on to the history of DAEP and discipline so that the reader will have an understanding of what DAEP schools are and how they got started.  I write about the different types of DAEP placements and the amount of days students are assigned.  My action research then goes into literature review where I write about the amount of different placements that have happened and what discipline strategies has been practiced before.  I researched the discipline strategies before DAEP placement and how successful they have been.  Then I go into what DAEPs are currently doing to correct student’s discipline and how it is working.  For my action research design I started with writing about the location of action research and some of the rules about the DAEP I work in.  I give a brief summary of how the school is run and how a day looks like.  I collected data about the placement from the TEA website and analyze what the different types of placement are and what placements have increase and deceased.  I have also been implementing some activity and write about how they are working out.  Some of them have not worked out as I wanted.  I also have information from a survey I passed out but I am not sure if I should use it.  There was a problem with the school district when I passed it out.  I had e-mailed some of my teachers from Lamar but not until this course did I receive feedback on my action research.  My teacher for this course suggested I interview other teachers from the district the questions from the survey.  I plan to interview teachers of students who have been sent to LDMC to see how the students are doing.  She also suggests that I research successful strategies for working with students who have discipline issues.  I feel this is what I have been doing with the boytown culuminum that did not work very well.  I will see what else there is by getting books about discipline from the library.