Driving my Journey

Hello all and welcome to another captivating week in the life of Mr. Hatcher. This week we all learned and read about the 9 passions.... That's right, the PASSIONS. The passions that drive the journey. :) In these passions we looked at them and manipulated our thoughts based on what way we would or could use action research to have a better understanding of all things. I think after reading Dana's book I've realized just how important surveying the individual student is. Not only surveying them, but actually doing something with that data. I quoted Socrates in this weeks assignment and love the quote, thus I will share it with you just in case you have never seen it.....
. “Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.” –Socrates 450 B.C

The reason for sharing this quote is that my deeply rooted thoughts of understanding students becomes more and more prevalent every time I read it. It was also validated even  more by reading Dana this week. We as educators must some way find out what is driving students and what they like best. This way hopefully we can somehow get out of the dreaded ways that our youth have acted, learned, and thought for the last 2462 some odd years.....

Action Research

This truly does follow the title....."Hatcher's Endeavors." what a great first blog. What have I learned about action research? Well I have definitely learned what it is not. It is not a boring fad that lets other outsiders tell you what to do by researching something that has absolutely nothing to do with your school demographics, scores, and or anything else that doesn't pertain to you, yourself, and the people around you.
Through that I think you do understand that I have learned that it is something that truly drives what should be everyone’s main purpose!! That is to continue to educate you. When looking at data, does some action research, find out what you can do better, or better yet find out what other people are doing better than you and ask them for help. Action research couldn't be better in the educational system. It is something that we can use to look at everything that is valuable to us. I know in my class room alone with a simple survey and some free response questions I could take that data, cut it up and get some insight into what my students like about my teaching style and what bores them to no end.Follow the blog, folow the endeavors and gain some insight.
Leaders?? Leaders can use blogs in so many ways from book studies with one another, to having their staff do a book study and publishing it within their website, to having parents have a blog post for them with questions, comments, concerns, the possibilities are endless. I think one of the most valuable instruments are learning walks...Principals can't do learning walks like teachers... or at least as convenient. However, they can blog and bounce questions and ideas off one another. The possibilities are endless!