Action Research Project

I have been coaching students at Bancroft for  seven sessions now. Something I would like to focus more on is adequately engaging all of the students in my group. This is a pretty all-encompassing goal, because it includes getting the quieter students involved as well as those who are much more distracted/distracting in our group. I feel like I have improved on getting one student more engaged and interacting with the group, but have lost another student. Then I have two who have the opposite issue, they talk and interrupt what we are doing with off-topic conversation points that it take us off-track. Sometimes they aren't paying attention and ask exactly what someone else already has.

What I will do to keep track of my progress, will take some notes during and especially after our sessions. I will take some video and also blog about my challenges in working towards progress in this area. I will also do some online research (likely school databases to start with) to find techniques are strategies pertinent to this skill set. I will reflect and assess how well I implemented these strategies and whether they were or could be effective. Much of this will be posted on this blog. 

Now's the time to focus on choosing a project

This last week's PA went remarkably well, which I had predicted. We had an excellent conversation about drug rehabilitation thanks to our visitor whose job was an addiction counselor. Everyone participated in the conversation, except one student who normally isn't completely quiet. Still, I found everyone to be quite engaged in the conversation - more so than when we had our community policing specialist visit a couple weeks ago.

Also, this week my students walked up the steps instead of running the halls. I asked them before we left the classroom where our group meets to walk together instead of what happened last time - and it worked.

Another excellent point was that my previously quietest student came up to tell me her week was going well (we didn't do a check-in due to lack of time) and that her notebook needed replacement. She said its pages were falling out, so I'll bring more next time - especially if we are going to have a specific project.

I want to have a brainstorming session where we discuss what potential PA projects we can take on. The PA site says these brainstorming discussions and planning take an hour each, so I am hoping that this next meeting we can in 40 minutes - which is likely unrealistic.

I want to show them a video first of what another PA group did. It has excellent production values, except a bit weak on original substance. The "just say no" line seems worn and could be added or amended. Still, I like that an individual asked his friends to back him up in not accepting drugs - even if the situation also seems contrived.

There are a great many things we could do to focus on preventing or reducing drug abuse in our community. It all depends what focus these students choose to go after. To make it easier, we could list all potential targets, all potential projects that would focus on them, and which ones we feel could be done most effectively given we only have a couple more sessions. I would like to meet with them more once we have chosen something, which is difficult but not impossible to do as the end of semester projects start taking greater precedent. I'd like them to be able to do something and enjoy having accomplished it.

A meeting with Karen Notsch

This week, our group met up with Karen Notsch a community policing specialist with the Minneapolis Police Department. She spoke to my "No drugs" group in addition to the  "No Gangs" group which chose to organize this.

Most of my personal time with my group was spent before and after the meeting. Before the meeting I told them we would be moving to the media center for the meeting, instead of the classroom. As soon as we left, I realized that I should have stated that we would walk together and not run down the hallways - which is what happened with half of my group. The remainder stayed with me and were able to find our meeting spot at the same time.

I felt like she wanted to say a great deal more, but wasn't sure what to say or not say to pre-adolescents. She let us coaches know beforehand that she had looked for information that was relevant to this age group, but could not find a whole lot. She considered our PA groups could work on creating at least one piece of literature directed to this age group, which she would help distribute city-wide. This sounds like a potential project, but her pitch to the students didn't seem to go over as well as she had wanted. We will see if either of our group's will be interested in doing this during our last few sessions.

After class, I let my group know that we would also be speaking with an addiction counselor the next time we meet. Speaking individually to some of my group members who were participated less, they each said they liked the speaker coming. I am hoping thy are more enthusiastic next time.

No PA this week....

The biggest bummer this semester had to be when Kristy told us we would have two fewer PA sessions than we had originally planned for. We only get 40 minutes a week with students, which I do not think is sufficient given that we now have fewer sessions. How do we get a project going and done in this time?

The issue with my group at the moment isn't that we haven't discussed the issues of drugs and how it affects the community, society, and world in multiple different ways. What we cannot seem to get to is finding something we want to do about it. There are some things mentioned by other PA coaches like making posters, but I would rather not suggest an explicit project. I want the students to think more about this problem and how they want to address it.

So, I really want them to get a lot from having two individuals visit our group to talk about the problem of drugs in our community from two different perspectives: one from the Minneapolis Police Department and one from a chemical dependency counselor. These are being arranged for two different days. To me, setting up two different days of the five we have left for these visits is a risky gamble. But given where my group's conversations have gone and what these two visits could mean, I am willing to take the risk. If these students are to hit the jackpot of ideas, it could very well be after they are exposed to the statements of those with first hand knowledge of the problem and solutions.