As I began this course, the word research kept resonating in my head. I am a science and math person and the mere sight of the word took me to a horrible place of note cards, texts, literature, bibliographies and my early graduation class where I have to painfully help educationally-challenged seniors through the research process. In the last 5 weeks, my view of research and the challenges of it have changed. I have learned that my thoughts and ideas are worthy of inquiry and why our principal has us participate in the various types of professional development. It all kind of makes sense now. I would also like to reference one of my cohort's blogs. Jake Prince posted a great TED video on his blog No Boxes Allowed. I really enjoyed the video and it gave me a refreshed perspective on leadership.

As I continue improving my action research plan, several problems arise. Two of the issues that I foresee are time to complete all the steps thoroughly and getting honest teacher feedback. I have some ideas about how to alleviate this and have received constructive feedback on these issues. The time thing is going to be all about my planning. Some ideas for getting teacher feedback are to meet with teachers to find out how they would best like to respond to surveys, interviews, and questions. The other idea is to meet with department PLCs as a group where there is sometimes more of a secure feeling to express opinions and issues and hear that others have the same concerns. Another issue that has been brought up continually by my cohorts is student usage of technology in class for non-educational use. Before wireless access for all students, our school allowed teachers to use student technology as they deemed necessary. Many students have Smartphones and so I used this technology often in class; therefore, students had their phones out often. Abuse of devices was not a problem due to the fact that I tried to keep my students busy from bell to bell and when in small instances we did have leftover time in class, I allowed my students to use their devices for their own use as long as it was not impeding any one else learning. They seem to work well with this give and take and I had very few negative issues.