I have a hard time getting past the fact that my action research failed. Although the class I ultimately ended up with was much different from what I had originally expected, I cannot move past the idea that all that work, all that time spent planning, was for nothing. Sure, I now know how to implement an action research study but what good is it if I’m bitter about the whole process?
My student teaching was a far-from-pleasant experience but I’ll try to stay positive. You people are nice and I like you, I wouldn’t want to scare you away with my negative energy.
My action research focused on improving student writing through creating skilled peer reviewers. Students created check lists that were to guide them while reading a partners paper. Mini lessons were conducted on “what makes good writing?” and “editor’s marks” among other things requested by the students. The problem was the seventh grade students hadn’t had enough experience writing to feel comfortable commenting on someone else’s work. Many expressed concerns on not wanting to hurt peoples’ feelings and how they would rather talk about their writing than read and write comments on a partner’s. Perhaps schools could use this research as encouragement for assigning more writing in the classroom. Students were self conscience about their writing. School-wide initiatives were passed in my PDS that enforced writing across the curriculum, but I rarely saw the teachers implementing this. How can something that is so important to a students education (and I’m not just saying this because I love English) be ignored by teachers?
Heather, I also noticed a lot of apathy from the teachers at my PDS. Clubs and after school programs are few and far in between unless they involve a football or pom poms. Upon a proposal for a day were parents and other community members could come to the school to see everything that goes on and all the hard work of teachers and students (a kind of “showcase day”) teachers responded with looks of disgust. “How late will we have to stay?” “When would we have time to plan for this?” The idea was eventually dropped, even after the other interns and I asked to organize the whole thing.
It scares me that I may be like that one day. What can we do to keep the morale going, especially when met with reluctance to do anything extra from other faculty?
--Lauren
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I have to ask, Lauren, and you can respond off-blog: How can an action research project fail? I haven't seen your data, but it seems like what happened-- based on your description in this post-- is that the project didn't play out as you'd hoped it would. I still think you learned from the process. Helping students learn how to do peer editing is a long, drawn-out process, especially if students have never done it before. It sounds like this group of students was just beginning to learn. My hunch, based on my own experience and that of workshop-based teachers like Nancie Atwell and Donald Graves, is that students WERE learning how to peer edit but needed more time and experience with the idea. They needed modeling of how to respond to writing to make it better in ways that didn't hurt feelings.
It doesn't help that writing was implemented only superficially at your PDS. So back to your question about avoiding a continuation of the bitterness cycle: as Pollyanna-ish as this sounds, I really believe you decide that you as a teacher will not be pulled into the bitterness cycle. You say, "Okay, that activity didn't work as I'd intended. How can I rework it so it goes better next time?" So the entire faculty didn't like the showcase idea (I loved that idea, by the way)-- you find folks who are interested in the idea and do a mini version, even if it's just one or two classrooms. Going with the castle metaphor, you find some cracks in the wall, no matter how small they are, and start to chink away at them.
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