ARP Progress Report

Week 3 Assignment, Part 3

Draft Action Research Project Progress Report

*Note: Since beginning this endeavor to earn my masters degree and also since my first action research plan, I took on a new job. I am now an assistant athletic director. Before, I was a history teacher and head girls basketball coach. Because of this job change, my action research plan has changed quite some bit from the first plan.

Title: What can the Athletic Department do to Make Life Easier/More Efficient on the Campuses for our Coaches? (Still not happy with the title…work in progress)

Needs Assessment:  As a coach on a campus, I felt a little disconnected from our athletic department (meaning our athletic director and assistant athletic director). Coaches would see them at our big coaching staff meeting before school every year and maybe every now and then you might see them come to a game during the season. Visibility of the athletic department was a problem. When I took the job as an assistant AD in early August my eyes were even more open to the dysfunctions of our athletic department. With a new athletic director being named in April 2012 and myself coming on board in August 2012 we were both ready to revamp our department with a few goals in mind-we want to help our coaches be the best they can be for our student-athletes and we wanted to create processes that would help them do this. Along the way we discovered even more projects that needed to be taken on such as online football tickets, Friday night football cash processes, revamping the booster club guidelines, a need for a coach’s evaluation form and lots of little to-dos in-between!

Objectives and Vision of the ARP:

1) Online football tickets- This had been up and running about 3 weeks when I started work at the athletic office. This was a huge change for our district and much communication with the communities was needed. Then there was the “how does this work on a game night” piece. After a few hits and misses we figured out the best process for us and all ran smoothly after that. We finished online ticket sales and football season in November 2012.

2) Cash process for Friday night football games- Even though we used our online system and took credit cards at the window, many people still paid with cash at the games. We had to create a process for how the money would be reconciled and deposited. This was all created in August 2012 and ended in November 2012. We are now in the process of tweaking what we did and working with our BusOps and Finance departments to see if we can improve on the process for next year.

3) Booster Club guidelines- We quickly found a new for some revamped, more detailed booster club guidelines. These guidelines are very important to follow and we found that the ones in place were lacking some details. I re-wrote them and have submitted them to our Assistant Superintendent of BusOps for review. Hopefully we will have them in place by the 2013-14 school year.

4) Coach’s Evaluation Form- Every campus as an athletic coordinator and every coordinator was using a different evaluation form. After discussing this problem with the coordinators, we found the need for a common form. The athletic director and I worked to create a comprehensive form for the coordinators to use. Evaluations from the coordinators should be complete on all of their coaches by the end of May.

5) Parent and Athlete Surveys- I found out while working in this job that parents of athletes and athletes themselves would like a way to voice their opinions about our athletic programs. The athletic department would also like to know how our programs are viewed so we created surveys. These are online surveys that the parents and athletes complete at the conclusion of a sport’s season. The surveys cover everything from facilities, to staff, to athletic training care. The results are put into a report and sent to the athletic office and then to the coach of that sport. We have tested one sport at one campus and are making adjustments as needed. We want to send these surveys out for all spring sports in May 2013.

6) Visibility of Athletic Department- Our district has 5 high schools and 8 middle schools and over 250 coaches. Our new athletic director was a football coach at one of our district’s schools before becoming the AD. We both wanted to make a goal of attending as many practices and games as we could. We wanted the coaches to know that we are here for them and that we want to help them in any way we can. We split up and attend as many games as we can and have been to many practices as well. We will continue to do this throughout the year.

Review of Literature and Action Research Strategy:

There have been 2 resources that have helped me not only in my new job as assistant athletic director but with my action research project as well. Both books discuss leadership and how to make changes. Good to Great by Jim Collins and Switch by Chip and Dan Heath have been extremely beneficial. My athletic director recommended them to me when I took the job and once I told him I needed an action research plan he thought these books along with the changes we are implanting in our department would be a great fit.

Articulate the Vision:

I have communicated the vision for my action research plan to the athletic department in our staff meetings. We meet every Monday morning and I give them an update, get their opinions, and make adjustments along the way. Our athletic coordinators have also been great in helping me with this process. We are in constant communication on ideas we are implementing and changes they would like to see in our department. I have been able to make some of those changes happen and they are included in my ARP. Community members have provided feedback regarding our online ticket system and through the surveys put out after their child’s sport is complete.

Manage the Organization:

My project has grown the longer I have been working in this job. The athletic director and the athletic coordinators have been a huge help to me. I am able to arrange meetings, either in person, on the phone, or through email with them. The time piece to this question is always the hard part. Coaches on campus are very busy throughout the school day as are we here in the athletic office. Many times are visits about my project are early morning or late evening or even at a ball game I’m attending at night. I am constantly asking our coordinator’s what can we do to help our coaches and what can we do to help our athletes? Any time they have a suggestion, I bring it back to our AD and we talk about if we can make those suggestions a reality…do we have the funds? Is it in the best interest of the athletes or coaches?

Manage Operations:

My strategy with this project has been priority driven, meaning what has to come first, either based on the time of year or safety concerns. When I started in August it was clear that the need to get everything for football season lined up was top priority because it would be starting soon. That’s when I started organizing online ticket sales, campus tickets, stadium worker descriptions, sideline passes, etc. The AD told me this was all my responsibility, we communicated this with our athletic office staff, it was agreed and job duties were assigned. When conflicts arose, everyone knew to come to me to get help.

Respond to Community Interest and Needs:

There are many parts of this project but I feel like all of them will help the community, our student-athletes, and our coaches.  Athletics crosses many ethnicities and economic backgrounds along with both boys and girls. I’m excited about the changes we have made so far and the ones still yet to come. Specific needs of the community and the schools are communicated to us in our coordinators meetings, booster club meetings, and our open door policy at our office. Being more visible at events within our district has really opened the community up and they talk to us all the time about how great our programs are and they also voice any concerns. Our community can also email us anytime with questions or concerns about any of our athletic programs.

Progress on Action Research Project

I feel positive about my progress toward my action research project, which is looking into the need and benefits of a district wide middle school tryout process or policy. I was able to discuss this with several middle school coaches before their season started. The majority of middle school coaches agreed that a common tryout process would be beneficial for our district. I have completed the surveys I would like these middle school coaches to answer. I plan on distributing them within the next couple of weeks. I am currently working on surveys for high school coaches and administrators.

I have also been able to discuss this project and concern with some coaches from other districts. Most of these talks were informal, but provided a lot of good information. I wrote down notes after these conversations and will be sending these coaches surveys soon as well. I was surprised that most districts already have a common tryout procedure for middle schools. This just confirms my belief that our district is in need of one as well.

I will have good information about how our middle schools currently hold volleyball tryouts. I was able to speak with those coaches and even watch a few tryout sessions. The next season I will be able to do this with will be basketball. I’m still interested in discussing this matter more with the high school coaches, so that will be my next big area of research.

I currently have 20 hours of project work complete. Most of these hours consist of creating the surveys and talking with coaches from our district as well as other surrounding districts about their tryout processes.

REVISED Action Research Plan

Revised Action Planning Template
Goal: Evaluate the need for a district wide middle school athletic tryout/cut policy.
Action Steps(s):	Person(s) Responsible:	Timeline: Start/End	Needed Resources	Evaluation
1. Identify schools with problems surrounding their tryout/cut policy or lack of.	Jody Hormann	September 2012-ongoing	Middle/High School Coaches Copy of cut policy	Survey of coach’s needs/issues
2. Identify schools in the district and outside of the district that have clear, concise tryout/cut policies.	Jody Hormann	September 2012-ongoing	Middle/High School coaches in LISD and outside of LISD Copy of cut policies	Survey of coach’s needs/issues
3. Compare and contrast problematic cut policies to concise cut policies.	Jody Hormann	September 2012-ongoing	Middle/High school coaches Copies of cut policies Completed surveys from coaches	n/a
4. Interview high school and middle school coaches.	Jody Hormann	September 2012-ongoing	Middle/High school coaches Interview questions	Extract real, usable data via interview questions.
5. Interview athletic administrators.	Jody Hormann	September 2012-ongoing	Leander ISD Athletic Director/Assistant Athletic Director Campus Athletic Coordinators	Extract real, usable data via interview questions.
6. Interview principals at the high school and middle school levels.	Jody Hormann	September 2012-ongoing	Leander ISD Middle School and High School Principals or Assistant Principals	Extract real, usable data via interview questions.
7. Analyze data from all interviews to determine the need for a common cut policy.	Jody Hormann	September 2012-ongoing	Data collected throughout research study	n/a
8. Create a PowerPoint presentation to present findings to administrators and coaches	Jody Hormann	September 2012-ongoing	Data collected throughout research study Computer Access	n/a

Action Plan Template

Benefits of Blogging for Educational Leaders

Educators and educational leaders can benefit from blogging in many ways. Blogging can create an open forum for educators to share lesson ideas, best practices in the classroom, and even get advice from other educators and leaders. The instant feedback blogging provides is invaluable as well. Discussions can be open ended which can provide a huge variety of responses and opinions that can really get educator's creative juices flowing. As an educational leader, it's always refreshing to hear other's ideas or experiences that I could benefit from in my own life.

Action Research

Action research, in education, is taking an active, real life approach to solving problems and improving upon issues or situations in which educators and administrators come upon. You are are active participant when you use action research. With active research, you don't just sit back and study data some stranger has compiled. Active research is about being in the trenches. It's a process that starts with an issue and requires planning, time, experiences, and sometimes even failed attempts before the best solution is found. The key to finding the solution to the inquiry or problem requires reflections on the actions you have taken.

In education, action research is studying the ways in which your school, or you, the administrator works (ex.routines, practices, challenges) and then taking the results of the studies and implementing changes that would benefit the school overall and those that work and learn inside of it. Basically, studying the school and figuring out ways to make it a better place to work and learn. Action research is a combination of both action and research. An administrator will want to research the real life issues in their school and then take the appropriate actions to solve problems or enhance the good things pertenant to the specific school. 

 In general, the practitioner inquiry movement focuses on the concerns of practitioners (not outside researchers) and engages practitioners in the design, data collection, and interpretation of data around their question (Dana, 2009).  Unlike passive observations in traditional educational research, action research focuses on action. It requires the researcher to be actively engaged in inquiries, problem solving, improvement plans, etc. Instead of just reading research and data compiled by an outside source, unrelated to the school environment, action research puts the researcher in those “real life” scenarios and leads to them discovering ways to solve problems, improve classroom practices, and possibly creating a better overall learning environment themselves.