Research: Week 2 Lessons

In a video we watched this week, Dr. Timothy Chargois spoke about an old adage: "Oh, if I just reach one kid..."  Teachers in the lounge and in the hallways try to cheer each other up with that cliche and we tell it to ourselves when we have a class that just doesn't seem to catch on to something we are presenting.  He spoke about how much that saying can't be in the teachers' mind anymore because of accountability.  I truly feel that a teacher would not be happy just reaching one student in a class of 30.  That would be a frighteningly bad statistic that would make any teacher wince.

The assignment this week required us to find action research topics in 9 areas of "wonderings" of many school leaders.  Although I knew that I am extremely interested in the teachers because I feel that teachers are the backbone of any school, I was able to take something I found in the Dana text and mold my own research topic from it.  Our school's new principal made many changes to the master schedule and changed teachers' class assignments.  So far, this has had a variety of effects on the teachers.  Some are happy with the change, but the ones that are not are very unhappy, which is affecting the students.

It seems as I have arrived at my topic for research: What is the effect of changing a teacher’s assignment on teacher motivation and on student success?