I would like to answer the questions How can I create a sense of warmth in my students and prevent them from being involved in bullying situations in school and/or related to school (i.e. the bus, playground, and after-school groups)? Do the students recognize a bullying situation? Do they know how to act to stop the situation? Can a once or twice-weekly class meeting create a sense of empathy in a classroom? Will that sense of empathy carry over to others who are not in our classroom (on the bus, etc.)?
Activities designed to achieve the objectives- I hope to implement a plan that will have a positive impact on bullying in my students. I will like to annually survey student concerning the prevalence and severity of bullying also to communicate a clear moral position against bullying and harassment. I will also like to implement bullying prevention principles with students, parents and educational staff.
Resources and research tools needed for data gathering- Debra Marquez- School Counselor- Principal at R.P. Harris Elementary, School District
Draft timeline for completion or implementation of activities- Start date: January 2012 – End date: May 2012
Persons responsible for implementation of the action research plan- Shawna Punch Administrators- Debra Marquez school counselor, Sharon Sims Behavior administrator, all teachers 3rd to 5th grade teachers
Process for monitoring the achievement of goals and objectives- Debra Marquez will provide printed data on students and parents survey.
Assessment instrument(s) to evaluate the effectiveness of the action research study- Myself and my site supervisor will make a comparative analysis of the results that we find after implementing the positive system and the data we had prior to putting the action research project in place. We will use the data collected by the counselor and the feedback from the classroom teachers.
OUTCOMES | ACTIVITIES | RESOURCES/ RESEARCH TOOLS NEEDED | RESPONSIBILITY TO ADDRESS ACTIVITIES | TIME LINE | Benchmark | Assessment |
Create a sense of warmth on my campus. | Create different surveys to find out how the students feel about the subject of bullying and how they take it into consideration and the importance of it. | Survey the 3,4,5 grade students. | Ms. Marquez school counselor. | January 2012-June 2012 | Meet with the school administrator and review the information collected from the surveys. | Meet with the leadership and talk about what work and what didn’t from the action research and find out what will be done the next school year. |
Can a student recognize a bullying situation? | Interview a student that has already been bullied by another students and ask them if they knew they were being bullied and why or how? | Interview the 4th grade girls who recently suffered an incident with bullying. | Ms. Marquez school counselor. | January 2012-June 2012 | Meet with the school administrator and review the information collected from the interviews. | Meet with the leadership and talk about what work and what didn’t from the action research and find out what will be done the next school year. |
Stopping bullying from occurring. | Have weekly class discussions on bullying and on how we can help prevent it in our school. | Get together once a week with the fourth grade girls and just talk about how we together can make bullying stop. | Ms. Marquez school counselor | January 2012-June 2012 | Meet with the school administrator and review the information collected. | Meet with the leadership and talk about what work and what didn’t from the action research and find out what will be done the next school year. |
Setting the Foundation:
To improve the student understanding about the importance of not being a bully. To make them understand that bullying is very dangerous not only emotionally,
but also physically. An important belief that I have as an educator is that students need a safe, comfortable environment in order for learning to occur. I believe that if a student is being bullied his primary concern is not education, but his/her safety or the situation going on around them. I hope that by learning more about the danger of school bullying, I can take measures to prevent bullying in my own classroom. These measures include fostering positive attitudes and empathy in my own classroom to reduce the occurrence of bullying that my students face and teach the coping strategies with which they feel comfortable using when they are
bullied.
Analyzing Data:
I have looked the incidents reports of bullying going on in our school in the last three years. Most of the incidents have occurred in the upper grades mainly in 5th grade. This made me wonder if I should focus on 5th grade or on the lower levels to help prevent bullying from happening in the 5th grade.
Activities/ Deeper Understanding:
To get qualitative data, I interviewed the fifth grade teacher to get a better understanding of the situation in their grade level. I also interviewed a fourth grade and third grade teacher. After the interviews I started to look in the students files to find out how many times had the incident with the same students had happened. Mainly because during the interviews the same students names kept coming up. The students bullying in third, fourth or fifth grade ended up being siblings. Which made me wonder if the problem of these siblings being bullies was coming from them seeing it at home? My next step will be interviewing the students to find out their feeling on bullying and ask them a few question on how things are at home.
Engaging in self-reflection:
Will I be able to find a solution to this problem? Is bullying going to get worse worldwide? Is my work here really going to have a positive impact on the situation?
Exploring Programmatic Pattern:
The only pattern that I have found while doing my research is that it all starts by the girls orally offending another girl mainly because of a boy. Also, that the problems start outside of school and then it is brought into the school by one student to another. Then once it is brought out not only do more than one student get involved, but the bullying gets grater.
Determining Factors:
The action research project will end in June 2012. I would like to continue to monitor the student’s behavior and to keep contact with the students I interviewed to make sure they are still on the right track.
Taking Action For School Improvement:
We will participate in a school against bullying program. We will also keep good track of the incidents on bullying and make sure we talk personally to students and make them understand the danger of bullying.
Sustaining Improvement:
To sustain improvement we must find out what is working and what is not. We need to constantly keep and eye on those students who we might think are being bullied or who might be bullies. Also, to hold and assembly every year to make sure the whole campus get the information about bullying.
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