Update on Action Research Plan

One of the biggest concerns that we currently have on our campus is a negative culture and climate among the students and a negative impression of the school by parents and other members of the community.  The students do not have much pride in their school and this attitude has a trickle down effect that causes the parents and community members to have a negative impression.  In truth, the bad reputation is not deserved, we have been a recognized campus for the past three years.  After discussing this concern with my site supervisor, we decided that it would be a good idea to figure out how to turn things around.  As a coach, I have noticed that my athletes seem to have more school pride than my students who are not involved in any extracurricular activities so I have decided to research whether or not this is actually the case.  I will also be researching how participation in extracurricular activities influences a students academic performance.  In order to determine this I will be comparing the grades and standardized test scores of students who are involved in at least one extracurricular activity with those who are not involved in any.  In addition to this comparison of test scores and grades, I will also be conducting surveys of mine and other teacher’s students in order to guage their level of school pride and how that correlates to their participation in extracurricular activities.  I will also try to determine whether or not there is a connection between how connected a student feels to the school community or their sense of school pride and how well they perform academically.  At the conclusion of my project, I hope to find that academic performance and sense of school pride are strongly connected to participation in extracurricular activities.  If this is the case, a follow up project would be to find ways to get more students involved in extracurricular activites.  So far I have not been able to get much work done on this project, mainly because I need to get standardized test results and end of year grades which will not be available for another couple of months.  The hours that I have gotten so far have been focused on developing the surveys that I will administer to students and identifying students who are involved in extracurrilcular activities.  The majority of my research will be completed in the summer when I have access to things like grades and standardized test scores.