Today I wanted to share with some of what I am learning related videotaping in the classroom. As I learn more and more about instructional coaching, one thing that is consistently a part of the conversation is the importance of teachers recording themselves teaching, as well as coaches recording themselves coaching, and the conversations that happen based on those recordings. Jim Knight, an expert on instructional coaching, along with a team of authors and researchers, published an article entitled “Record, Replay, Reflect,” and in this article, they share the results of a study they did on “what happens when coaches and teachers watch themselves on video.” This article provides a lot of insight on why recording yourself is important.
Here are my biggest takeaways from the article:
- Video provides us with an objective perspective of what is going on in our classrooms and conversations. We can’t get this same perspective from someone else. We need to see it for ourselves.
- Reflecting on recorded lessons or conversations helps us to set specific goals for things we want to improve. We, as teachers and coaches, get to pick what we want to focus on and what is important to us.
- Recordings can help us gather data to track our progress towards a goal.
- Teachers and coaches should watch the video by themselves first to be able to react and reflect in their own way.
- Our nonverbal behaviors (facial expressions, gestures, etc.) are often the things that would go unnoticed if we didn’t take time to record and watch ourselves.
- Improvement comes from first establishing a clear picture of our reality.
After reading this article and reflecting on what it said, I decided to record a few of my own lessons and reflect upon them. There was a lot for me to see and take away from the videos, and as the article said, I was able to pick the specific goal that I wanted to focus on. I plan to use more recordings along the way to collect data and reflect on my progress towards my goal.
