Monday, March 25, 2013

Action Research Cultural Change Final Report


Cultural Change: Does implementing programs that empower students to be proactive in their decision making create positive cultural change on the middle school campus?

Introduction / Background
Middle School ages are hard enough as it is, now add in the Urban setting along with Title I status to the culture of these students. The label of “At Risk” is also placed on these students based on their economic needs. Many of these student’s parents have speratic work schedules which places the older siblings taking care of the younger ones after school hours. Many of our students interact with each other based on other situations they have seen taking place outside of our school walls.
The community places a large impact on our student body. Changes have been occurring in the community the last year and a half due to newly established community business pouring money and resources to insight positive change. Many of our students demonstrate what they know while they are at school. To some extent this is not always positive. There are many unwanted behaviors that take place on campus and are directed at other students and faculty. This causes students to be out of the class setting and disrupting other student’s academic studies.
My action research will be working with Safe School Ambassadors on campus and gathering data that is recorded by these students. These students have been given specific training and the tools needed to be able to reflect on certain actions taking place on the middle school campus. I will also be looking at data related to our ambassadors to see if a positive impact is being made on our campus by the use of this program or if adjustments need to be made.
This program will also empower the students in making decisions related to their overall experience in the middle school setting. The overall goal is to create an atmosphere that supports every student to be academically successful without the undue pressures of unwanted mistreatment taking place on the middle school campus.
Our Assistant Principals are overwhelmed with student discipline issues on campus along with the abundance of student tardiness to classes. This has caused a decrease in our student’s academic standing and an increase in their social issues on campus. The traditional methods do not seem to be working with the students on this middle school campus so we need to assess the problem areas and look to other means to create a more conducive learning atmosphere. Looking at this age group they need to feel that the decisions are coming from them, so the research will be based on empowering the students to make decisions and change with some limitations.
In conducting my research I want to delve into the minds of our students to find the areas they feel are of most concern on the campus and to see where the biggest mistreatments on campus end up being amongst our student body. From the information gathered the goal is to help implement change on the campus to see if a redirection of focus can be made from social issues to academic successes.
In conducting my research I will be working closely with my Assistant Principals and counselor on my campus. My research should help in the decrease of discipline and counselor referrals so our administrators can spend more time on academic issues instead of social issues on campus. The student body should also benefit in a more productive atmosphere on campus with the empowerment of the student’s decision making processes being put into place. By incorporating some of our surrounding businesses the community should also benefit from the outcome of the research by building the community relationship with our campus.

Please refer to the following terms which will be used throughout the research paper.
  • Middle School ages are typically considered as a child between the ages of eleven and fifteen. Sometimes this is not always consistent. There are sometimes children age sixteen or seventeen in the middle school based on being held back a year or two in elementary.
  • Community is any of the surrounding families or businesses which have contact in some way with the school campus.
  • Safe School Ambassadors (SSA) are students who have gone through the Safe School Ambassador two day training which took place on campus. The training gave these students the tools needed to redirect situations on campus or to get help when needed.
  • Family Group Facilitator runs the bi-weekly meetings with a group of SSA students. They record the meetings and collect the action logs from the SSA students.
  • Action Logs are the SSA student’s reflections and reports of their usage of the skill taught to them through the SSA training. These logs will reflect types of mistreatment going on along with date, time and location of the mistreatment. It will also reflect the actions they took during the situations.



Literature Review
The following references are the sights I have looked at to draw information for my inquiry. Many of these sights reflect on the prevention of bullying in the school setting. Bullying has become a huge issue in schools and is being looked at very closely by the legislature. Many laws are being passed and updated and states are being scrutinized if they do not have something in place to protect our children from the unnecessary pressures put upon them by their peers. Community Matters is a group who promotes the SSA program and looks to empower students with the strategies and tools to make smarter and safer choices and to work on creating a new culture in their school that they are proud to be a part of.
The government puts measures into place to help the public schools in areas of need dealing with school improvement. “(g) ASSISTANCE FOR LOCAL SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT- (1) PROGRAM AUTHORIZED- The Secretary shall award grants to States to enable the States to provide sub-grants to local educational agencies for the purpose of providing assistance for school improvement consistent with section 1116.” This has allowed my campus to get a grant which helped fund our SSA program on our campus provided through Community Matters.
Title I — Improving The Academic Achievement Of The Disadvantaged http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/pg1.html

Texas Anti-Bullying laws do not oversee the districts and what they are doing about it in their districts yet but they are starting to provide ways to increase awareness and start prevention on the campuses. These laws and policies are creating awareness in the different types of mistreatments that students are placing on their peers. Some are more apparent than others and these policies are placing certain strategies into place to make the campuses more aware.
Texas Anti-Bullying Laws & Policies Analysis of State Bullying Laws and Policies – December 2011” (U.S. Department of Education).  http://www.stopbullying.gov/laws/texas.html

Action research is an area that I needed more study in to help me in my research. These guides helped to give some pertinent information on how to organize my research to get the most out of it. It helped me in looking into the actual issues I was concerned about and how to organize my thoughts and place them into a qualitative inquiry to get the most out of my research. These resources also gave me some insight as to how to present my research to the people who can make a difference on the campus.
 Herr, K. G., & Anderson, G. L. (2005). The action research dissertation: A guide for students and faculty. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Meyers, E., & Rust, F. (Eds.). (2003). Taking action with teachers research. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Kincheloe, J. L. (1991). Teachers as researchers: Qualitative inquiry as a path to empowerment. New York: Falmer Press.

Our Texas Schools, lawmakers are tackling the issues of bullying in our public schools. This group is working to create laws that will need to be incorporated into our school systems. It has not passed yet but they are in the process of making some major changes in the future of education.
Action Research Design
Subjects
Reflecting on the hallways in the school and how many students were still in the hallways after the class bell had rung was overwhelming. I then started to reflect on how many students were in the assistant principal’s office and the numbers were growing in our In-School Suspension (ISS) class each day. Looking at who the students were sitting in the assistant principal’s office was starting to become déjà vu. I started looking into the discipline problems on campus and relating it to the student’s tardiness to class.
My research started to take shape when I looked into our Safe School Ambassadors (SSA) program. I knew I could use these SSA students to help gather data and maybe pinpoint some of the issues on campus and where they are taking place. This data will help to shed some light on the issues we are facing but also give a better understanding of what it taking place on our campus with our students. There are 63 SSA students on campus and they are a combination of all three grade levels. This should produce a well rounded amount of feedback for data.
Middle school students between the average ages of eleven and fifteen will be my target population for this research. My sample will consist of the data collected by the 63 SSA students on the campus. These students will go through training on detecting a range of mistreatment happening on the campus and strategies to defuse this mistreatment with the understanding of strict confidentiality. Discipline and tardiness to classes are easily acquired for all students, the mistreatment that takes place on campus is harder to document. The students are normally the first responders to issues on campus so it is only reasonable to use them to gain data.

Procedures
My action research will be working with Safe School Ambassadors on campus and gathering data that is recorded by these students. These students have been given specific training and the tools needed to be able to reflect on certain actions taking place on the middle school campus. I will also be looking at data related to our ambassadors to see if a positive impact is being made on our campus by the use of this program or if adjustments need to be made.
There is another program that will be introduced in the second portion of this research to see if it will have any impact on the culture and climate of the middle school students and faculty. This program will also empower the students in making decisions related to their overall experience in the middle school setting. The overall goal is to create an atmosphere that supports every student to be academically successful without the undue pressures of unwanted mistreatment taking place on the middle school campus.
Changing the culture of our campus would end up benefiting not only the students but the faculty as well. Trying to make this happen would need the help of my administration, counselor and some of the faculty on campus. In a meeting with the counselor and the Family Group Facilitators I will discuss the objectives of my research. I also will ask for feedback and insight that could help to reach the vision to create positive cultural change on our campus.  I will also elicit their help in collecting the data from their SSA students throughout the semester to use in the research.
The program is funded by a grant which the school counselor will have control of the funds. There will be a two day training that will take place with all of the Safe School Ambassador (SSA) students and the Family Group Facilitators. Each Family Group Facilitator will conduct a meeting every two weeks with their SSA students. During these meetings there will be discussions addressing the strategies they have been given and to keep “safety of self” as the most important. Discussions will also include mistreatments the students have seen and the locations of concern. The Family Group Facilitator will keep records of the meetings and discussions as well as collecting the student’s action logs.
The school counselor will help to maintain the data that is turned in by each Family Group Facilitator until turned in to be disaggregated. Monthly meetings will take place with the Family Group Facilitators, counselor and an administrator to update any new strategies or concerns that have arisen. All students on campus will be introduced to the new program in a grade level assembly, but on a less detailed venue than the SSA students and Family Group Facilitators. Student and faculty safety is our number one priority to promote successful academic learning.
Keeping organization within the groups is left up to the Family Group Facilitators to run their bi-weekly meetings. Tools and strategies for these meetings are provided in the SSA handbook along with any documentation paperwork. Activities are to be conducted at these meetings to stress the importance of this program and what the students feel needs to be done to increase all student safety and awareness on campus.
The school counselor makes sure that the monthly meeting schedule is put out and attended along with getting the passes out to the SSA students to attend their bi-weekly meetings. Any concerns that come up are brought to the school counselor or brought to the monthly meetings to be discussed. If action is serious enough to need immediate action an administrator will step in. All documentation will need to be turned in by the beginning of May before the end of the year SSA gathering.
Data Collection
Focusing on the needs of our students means learning what those needs are. The SSA program will help to empower our students with the tools needed to redirect unwanted behavior or to seek help without being put into an unwanted situation with their peers. These students will also be trained to reflect on the situations they partake in, on and off campus. Our students will be asked to record information pertaining to any situation that requires their SSA training and to turn in the documentation to be collected by a Family Group Facilitator. This documentation will be disaggregated by location and types of mistreatment taking place.
Data will also be taken on the SSA students to show if they are part of the positive culture change or part of the issues taking place on campus. Tardiness to classes and discipline will be looked at for each of the 63 SSA students. The objective of this research is to empower the students in their decision making for the betterment of all the students on campus. The vision of this research is to see if empowering our students will help to create positive cultural change on the middle school campus for all our students and faculty.
The following are the types of mistreatments recorded by our SSA students along with the locations of the mistreatments taking place. These findings have been collected by the family group facilitator in charge of each group and then turned in to be desegregated and placed into a readable report to be presented to the campus leadership team during the summer summit to aide in making decisions to continuing the SSA program on our campus for the following year. The information provided will also help in making any changes in campus policies that are necessary for our students and staff for the next school year.

SSA REPORTED DATA 2012 (20 Weeks)


Types of Mistreatment
# REPORTED

1
Act Against Campus
6

2
Other (self inflicted, stealing, yelling, depression)
9

3
Exclusion
21

4
Bullying (Threatening/Fear)
49

5
Physical (Push/Hit/Etc.)
79

6
Put Downs (Hurt Feelings)
134        
      TOTAL MISTREATMENTS REPORTED = 298

SSA REPORTED DATA 2012 (20 Weeks)
Location
# Issues Reported
                    LOCATION & % OF ISSUES REPORTED
1
Counselor Office
1
2
Stairs
2
3
After School Sports
3
4
Bathroom
3
5
Library
5
6
Patio
7
7
Bus
8
8
Locker Room
8
9
Outside
12
10
Home
13
11
Gym
17
12
Lunch Room
17
13
Neighborhood
21
14
Hallways
66
15
Classroom
86



TOTAL ACTION LOGS
269
REPORTED FOR 2012

There are more mistreatments documented than locations due to their being multiple mistreatments taking place in the same location with the same situation. The students were directed to fill out the action logs based on everything that took place.
Findings
The two surveys given, one at the beginning and one at the end of the year, gave a lot of feedback on what the biggest concerns of mistreatment are and the locations they felt the mistreatment was taking place on campus. The survey at the beginning of the year gave a good starting point for our SSA students to begin their action logs. This also kick started the vision to work on creating a cultural change on our campus starting with the students.
Taking all the students action logs and breaking down the data we found the highest mistreatment on campus was putdowns. This data also stated the second highest mistreatment was physical altercations. This took up 72% of the mistreatments taking place on campus. Breaking down the data even further we found that the largest mistreatments were actually taking place right inside the classrooms (32%) with the next highest being in the hallways (25%) during passing periods. It was kind of interesting how many actually were taking place off campus. In the neighborhood it was 8% of the mistreatments. This shows that the training that was given to these students gave them the tools they needed to help them in the community and not just on the campus.
The findings in this research helped to spark some of the conversation that took place during summer summit discussing the changes needing to be implemented the next year. Training for teachers on increasing their classroom management skills along with revamping the hallway passing procedures to get from class to class became a huge topic of discussion. The research gave a better picture of the situations taking place on our campus that need to be addressed for the betterment of all our students and faculty. A new program, Restorative Justice, which will piggy back off of the SSA program when implemented in the following year to help aid the SSA program. This program will also help to empower our students in making decisions that will be in their best interest and the best interest for all our students on campus. This new program has not been tried in Texas and will be a work in progress to keep an eye on.
Conclusions and Recommendations
After reviewing the data that had been collected, it showed a significant decrease in tardiness from August to May. We started the SSA program in January so in five months the tardy sweep and our SSA’s dropped the tardy count from around five hundred tardy students a period to around five hundred tardy students a day. This is a huge decrease and putting our students back into the classes for instruction. This also accounts for the reasons the mistreatments were higher in the classroom and hallways than any other place on campus. The difference this makes to our campus is we are now relying on the teacher to be present as the first responders to situations instead of having to rely on our students as the first responders when it takes place in other areas of the campus like the patios. This also presents the feeling of a safer school environment to our students on our campus.
I recommend continuing the SSA program with our students but also monitor their own actions on campus as well. We need to make sure our SSA students are making a positive impact on our campus instead of adding to the issues. The data shows that as our SSA students move through the program from sixth to seventh and on to eighth grade but tend to slack on their responsibilities and join in on the tardiness to classes as well as end up in the assistant principal’s office for various situations. Our eighth graders had the most problems out of our SSA students. This is an area that the family group facilitators need to focus on when conducting their bi-weekly meetings. They will follow up on their SSA students in-between meeting times to make sure everyone is on the right track. We need to make sure we are meeting the needs of our SSA students as well ensuring they are doing a great service for our school and community.
The SSA program gave students on campus the tools and strategies needed to make a safe and positive impact on campus. The students are normally the first responders to any situation that takes place on campus. This program utilizes this factor to create a positive impact on student activity and promote positive distractions from mistreatment that may possible occur otherwise. When one person stands up for the betterment of others it becomes contagious. This is what we are looking for on our campus. We are empowering our students to create the type of atmosphere they want to be in which is positive and beneficial to all our students. We are working to help our students see beyond the right now and make decision that will impact them to be successful learners.
References
ELEMENTARY & SECONDARY EDUCATION
Title I — Improving The Academic Achievement Of The Disadvantaged
 http://www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/esea02/pg1.html
Texas Anti-Bullying Laws & Policies Analysis of State Bullying Laws and Policies – December 2011” (U.S. Department of Education).
Safe School Ambassadors
Herr, K. G., & Anderson, G. L. (2005). The action research dissertation: A guide for students and faculty. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Meyers, E., & Rust, F. (Eds.). (2003). Taking action with teachers research. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
Kincheloe, J. L. (1991). Teachers as researchers: Qualitative inquiry as a path to empowerment. New York: Falmer Press.