Session 192535

1. Get Teachers Jazzed about
Self-Videotaping and
Peer Observation
Presented at TESOL 2011
Annual Convention
New Orleans, Louisiana
March 19, 2011
Session 192535
Laurel Pollard
Educational Consultant
lpollard@dakotacom.net
laurelpollard.com
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2. Teachers want to deliver effective instruction. And two key components of
successful professional development programs -- Self Videotaping and Peer
Observation -- can provide momentum for change. But it isn’t easy for teachers to
get excited about new projects when they are already overworked and stressed.
This workshop we’ll re-enact today can energize a faculty by
• eliciting the hopes and fears of all the teachers at a school
• creating two Pilot Teams: teachers who volunteer to try either Self-
Videotaping or Peer Observation and then recommend site-appropriate ways
to implement both projects school-wide.
• making sure these initiatives are not top-down but rather are designed -- by
the teachers who will use them -- to be worth their time and to serve them
well.
What follows is the script for a workshop that brought impressive results when it
was offered at a large middle school
• in an economically stressed neighborhood
• during AIMS testing week
• one week after word came down that a third of this faculty would not be
getting a contract for the next semester.
Given all that, the principal and coaches at this school thought that no teachers – or
at best only a few – would volunteer for the Pilot Projects.
Yet twenty-one teachers signed up (from a faculty of 45). They formed two
Pilot Teams, did the work they volunteered for, and created systems for Self-
Videotaping and Peer Observation to be implemented the following semester.
Teachers are under stress, but their commitment remains strong.
Note: The focus for the year in this school was
increasing student engagement.
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3. Introduction
As teachers enter, they see this on the whiteboard, large and colorful:
Student Engagement Pilots Needed for Two Pilot Projects . . .
1. Self-Videotaping. Why? To see WHAT IS.
2. Peer Observation. Why? For school-wide osmosis of good ideas
YOU are the ones who can make these systems
workable and useful at ________ School!
Take a colored card from the table; write your name on it.
This is yours. Keep it; use it as a bookmark if you like.
Or if you decide to volunteer for one of the Pilot Projects, just write which project
you choose and give the card to me as you leave.
Schools across the country have tried to engage students more.
And you know where I’M coming from . . . the more we engage students, the more
they learn AND the easier our lives become as teachers.
Some schools succeed in this. Others don’t.
The successful schools use Self-Videotaping and Peer Observations.
But they do it right, not wrong – they figure out how to maximize the benefits and
avoid the pitfalls. And they figure out how to do it in ways that make teachers’ lives
easier, not more difficult.
These two projects will go school-wide next semester.
But (principal’s name) doesn’t want it to be top-down.
You are the people who know how this can work well for ________ School.
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4. Self-Videotaping
Trainer’s opening remarks:
My own first experience of videotaping myself and my class was in my third year as
a teacher.
• My pacing made me look nervous, even though I was not.
• I totally ignored the students in front, on my left! And I’d been doing this
without noticing it for THREE YEARS.
In later videotapes, I started watching my students. I saw a lot that I didn’t notice
while I was teaching – e.g., who lost attention, who raised a hand that I didn’t see. I
got a lot of good ideas about things I wanted to do differently.
And by the way, when you see yourself on tape, remember:
• No, you don’t sound like that.
• And no, you don’t look like that.
Recordings add pounds and distort voices.
Faculty Process for Self-Videotaping:
1. Take a sheet of paper. On the top, write “Self-Videotaping: what can go wrong.
List reasons NOT to videotape your class. You don’t need to write your name. (3
minutes
2. Now turn your paper over. On the back, please write the best outcomes you can
think of. Go ahead, dream big! (3 minutes)
3. Using Numbered Heads Together, share some of these ideas with the whole
faculty. (Trainer elicits first the negative ideas, then the positive ones)
4. (Trainer collects all the notes.)
5. Scope of work for pilot teachers: (Trainer writes this on white board.)
• Tape your class once. Upload it to your personal computer.
• Watch it.
• Fill out a brief form (technical check, mostly)
• Attend one meeting to recommend a system to use school-wide next
semester. You will have the full list of notes from today’s workshop, so you
will know what your colleagues dread and what they hope for.
Our aim: to avoid all the pitfalls you just wrote about, to make this easy for ________
School teachers, and to gain the benefits you just dreamed up and wrote down.
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5. Peer Observations
Trainer’s opening remarks:
We need to be careful about how we give feedback. (Trainer gives a couple of short
examples here from personal experience, one negative, the other positive). Peer
observations must be supportive, not critical; confidential; professional. A
recommended formula: “One thing I saw in your class that I can use to engage my
students more.”
Faculty Process for Peer Observations (a repeat of the steps above)
1. Take a new piece of paper and write “Peer Observations” on the top. Write
the worst you think could happen if you do peer observations -– based on
your own experience, on things you’ve heard about, or on what you imagine.
(3 minutes)
2. Now write the best you think could happen. Again, let your imagination go!
(3 minutes)
3. Using Numbered Heads Together, share some ideas with the whole faculty.
4. (Trainer collects these notes.)
5. Scope of work for pilot teachers: (on whiteboard)
• Observe a colleague once (15 min to full period). YOU choose whom to
observe. You may do this during planning period (if cross-subject) OR the
school will provide someone to cover your class.
• Fill out a brief form.
• Attend a meeting after spring break to recommend a school-wide system
for next semester. You will have everyone’s notes from today’s
workshop.
The Pilot Teams will help make sure the negative things in these notes do not
happen here -- and the positive things do!
Sign-up: If you would like to be on one of the pilot teams, take the colored card
with your name on it and write Video or Peer Observation under your name. Give it
to me – and have a very relaxing Spring Break!
A Final Note
This will not be YOUR script.
My hope is that it may spark your own good thinking.
Jim Cummins and others rightly point out that policy-makers
aren’t helping teachers deliver effective instruction – change has
to be at the school level. Cummins issues a call to action: as
classroom teachers, we have to do this ourselves.
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