Portfolio Fun

I've been sitting here for a few hours working on getting things together for our portfolio review on November 1st and I really just felt like stopping to reflect on what I have been doing (sarcasm intended!). Now that I have settled on motivation as my focus for action research, I am taking it a step further to focus in on motivating African-American students to increase their performance in schools. My thoughts are to find a way to collect data on 2 African-Americans I currently teach based on their perceptions of the school, education in general, and their vision for their future.  I will use this data to analyze an approach, developed through the analysis of several research-based methods and to see which one I think will work the best.  I will then use this strategy to measure any increases or decreases in performance with a final survey that revisits goal-setting and motivation.  I think this is where I am heading so I am taking some steps to identify an analyze research focused on this area.