Learning about action research.

Well this week has been slightly revelational!  I'm not going to lie, I texted a friend as soon as I saw the name of the course and told her that I was already dreading it simply because of its name- Research! How terrible is that!?!? Thankfully, I'm sure Dr. Abshire saw this coming and our first assignment was to literally define action research.  I quickly realized that my freakout may have been a little on the  dramatic side...  Action research is simply seeing a problem and then creating and implementing a plan to solve it.  The ACTION part is vital- you're doing something, and that something is not just marching yourself to the library to dig through dusty books!  The action part includes coming up with a way to change something on your campus to help your students, your colleagues and make your campus an overall more successful learning environment-- who wouldn't want that?! This is not to say that action research is easy, I'm actually pretty sure that action research will take more work that just traditional, library research, but it is automatically better because you have a hand in every step of the process and in working towards its success.  I am a 4th grade teacher at my campus and I am highly involved in being there for the kids at my campus.  I volunteer often, help whenever it's needed, and even sponsor an after-school club.  I am invested in the lives of the students at my school, and those of you that are like me, we are already doing parts of action research.  So many of us educators see a need and immediately do our best to fix it.  However, by learning about action research, we are able to be better problem-solvers.  Action research gives us the steps to be more prepared, focused, direct, and successful at resolving problems on our campuses.