Reinventing Schools

After reading the article, Change as Collaborative Inquiry by Tony Wagner, I saw many connections to the problems we have in our schools today. The biggest connection I made was that our goals are usually "answer driven" instead of being based off of inquiry. Each year we have a list of about five things that are our district and school "improvement plan." When we have list of things set as our goals, we often touch briefly on each instead of taking the time to really improve one thing at a time. This also happens with initiatives we have going on each year. It seems it becomes a revolving door of trying one thing, then moving on before we master the first thing.


At my school we have a group of people that works on our school improvement plan each year. This group involves teachers from each grade level, specialists, administration, special education department, a paraprofessional, and a school board member. This group spends a day collaborating to come up with the school improvement plan for the year. The issues we face is that not everyone is a part of the process (only the group members) and that we usually have a list of about ten things in four different categories. In my opinion, that is a lot of goals to focus on in a year. Most of us teachers, do not refer back to this after getting the plan handed to us. What is the point of spending all of this time on a school improvement plan if we do not consistently reflect on meeting the goals?
As a staff, I think we need to limit our goals, so we can focus on mastering a few things over a period of time instead of trying to do it all at once. This will help us teachers focus on our goals and work at achieving them.

My action research that I have done throughout this masters program has allowed me to adapt my instruction and meet the needs of my students. I have set an individual goal for myself to focus on my math instruction and implementing guided math groups. Focusing on this one area has allowed me to spend time researching ideas, implementing different centers, and modify things that aren't working. I take time to reflect on my instruction and if it is successful and meeting the students needs. This allows me to adapt on a daily basis. This change has been a positive implementation in my classroom because the students are learning in a variety of ways (groups, partners, individual), are making choices for their learning, and are learning through hands on with manipulatives, games, etc. The students are also getting a chance to redo their work to show their progress, as they learn at different rates. This change was implemented to be more like the "real world" where you make mistakes, learn from them and try again. I want my students to know that they can learn and do things, but they might not be there quite "yet."