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The last time I recorded myself teaching was in 2013 when I was going through the National Board Certification process. I was submitting video of my teaching to meet some specific requirements for the certification. To record my classes, I recruited a student from my school's AV club to do the taping. I carefully planned a "perfect" class full of activities and student interaction and feedback loops and assessments. I set up the classroom perfectly for taping--students carefully grouped, materials prepared for distribution, and space for the student with the camera to move around. And on the day of the taping, the carefully over-orchestrated class went perfectly! I was elated. Perfect.
Then I got the video home.
The student filming had forgotten to turn the sound on. I had a recording of my perfect language-based class with no sound. And no way to recover it.
I would have to record again.
"Culture of Privacy?"
Judith Warren Little's excellent writing "Professional Development in the Learning-Centered School" highlights the importance of "moving from a culture of privacy to teacher learning community"(17). But for crying out loud, it's not easy. You'd think that in the social-media-loving environment most of us live in today that taking one more "extended selfie" in the form of a videotaped class wouldn't be a big deal.
I'm not alone in my anxiety over taping my teaching, although a google search looking for evidence of this anxiety online yields few results. Maybe we just aren't all that open about it? Anecdotal evidence from conversations with fellow teachers over the years confirms that I might not be alone in my trepidation. One friend is more wound up about watching herself on tape than she is about having the Head of Schools visit her class. When I hung the 360 camera in my classroom in preparation for recording, a number of teachers stopped in and freaked out just because the bracket for the camera was there.
The most complex of the questions I am confronted with when watching my own teaching is, "Does what I think is happening in my classroom match what is actually happening in my classroom?" (Hint: The answer is almost always no.)
But there are a number of other questions (major and minor, real and ridiculous) that might run through my head. Do I seriously put my hands in my pockets that often? Is that what my voice really sounds like? How did I not notice _________ happening when I thought class was going so well?
And then there are the questions about the broader audience for the filming. What will the tape be used for? For the NBCT filming, it was evaluative--a successful class and my reflection on that class were keys to getting my certification. A filming to be used for evaluative purposes adds a whole host of anxieties. Who will evaluate? What will they use to evaluate it? How will they calibrate their evaluation of my teaching against others? What context will they need in order to understand the class and its participants and my relationship with my students? How does my reflection on the lesson tie into the evaluation?
For my upcoming week at Spence, I had to tape two classes before the end of the school year and upload the videos to a google drive. As part of the week (first week of August), we'll analyze our videos (it's one month after the end of the school year and one month before I go to Spence as I write this post). I decided to tape four classes--two 45-minute classes and two 85-minute classes. I thought it would be interesting to watch the same group of students twice (in a shorter class and in a longer class), and I also thought it would be interesting to watch the same lesson plan as it played out with two different groups of students.
360 Degrees of Observation--The Set Up
Rather than use a traditional camera for capturing a class, I opted for one of our school's 360 degree cameras. I was intrigued by what I had heard about the technology--I could watch my class at nearly any angle, follow an individual student's experience throughout the class, and even zoom in on a student's work in progress (this didn't turn out to be exactly true). I also thought I could focus on individual conversations in the classroom (this also didn't turn out to be true with the tech I had).
A fellow teacher crafted special mounting brackets so that we could hang the camera from our classroom ceilings. I don't have a picture of that setup, but the bracket isn't subtle. People walk in the room and say, "WHAT IS THAT?!?" And then they tend to duck as if something is flying at them (I can't explain why) when they think that the bracket has a camera in it and that the camera is on.
A tip for anyone interested in using a setup like this is to mount the bracket in your classroom for a couple of days before actually taping the classes. Doing this gave me and the students time to get used to the equipment. After a few days of having the bracket in the classroom, I added the camera. But I didn't video with it. Again, we were all just getting used to it hanging here. And then before I actually took a shot at taping an entire class, I hit record a few times with the camera with the kids in the room. They'd ask me, "Wait, are you taping this?" and I'd tell them I was just trying out the technology (I was).
On that note, the same questions that pop up for teachers about taping classes pop up in students' minds. Why? What will this be used for? Can "they" see me doing the thing that I'm not supposed to be doing during class? (My students seemed to imagine someone akin to Big Brother watching the classes as they were happening. Since the camera can be controlled wirelessly, these aren't unreasonably paranoid thoughts.) So it's important (and fair and ethical) to communicate clearly with your students about the point of taping a class. My students liked that I was using it to reflect on my teaching. And they liked that I was limiting access to the video (by making the link on Youtube private and only sharing it with people who needed access).
On the days I chose to tape, I started the recording before class started so that I could capture the students coming into the room and lessen the "Is that thing on?" questioning that happened whenever anyone approached the camera. (Every video starts with me staring with my head tilted at an odd angle at the camera for an inordinately long time saying something like, "Yep, I think this is on!"). I established with students that I might be taping any class that week (or every class that week). And because the students understood the purpose of the taping and they trusted me, it didn't seem to be a big deal to them to walk into the classroom with the camera already on. Students either ignored the camera altogether or addressed it directly at times that we were taping.
The Aftershow--To Keep or Not to Keep (and How?)
I hit record when the kids walked in. Hit stop when the kids walked out. And then I decided whether or not that class would be a keeper for Spence based on my answer to one question: "Does this class feel representative of a typical day in my class?" Unlike my NBCT teaching video where I was looking for the "perfect" class (a class I no longer believe exists), for Spence I wanted a class that would allow me to look critically at my teaching on a typical day--warts and all. (In a typical class, I have kids who over participate, who under participate, who get up for a drink at a totally inappropriate moment, who have their cell phones out when I tell them to put them away, who might unleash a word of profanity, who say something else inappropriate, who wrestle with messy ideas, who ask a question I've already answered, who don't listen to my directions... and who all do the opposite of these things.)
So I finished the work with the cameras, and then I had to start the work to convert the videos to a usable format. Want those details? Shoot me an email. It was a sharp, sharp learning curve. And time consuming. But I won't consume any blog space with the technical details for now.
I'll be back in August to post again after I've had a chance to do the film analysis with my soon-to-be-friendly-friends at the Teaching Institute at Spence. I'm intrigued by this technology as it can be used to improve my teaching, but there's also some anxieties...
Quicknotes:
1. I'm guessing feeling anxious about taping a class is normal. Knowing the why? and the who? and the what after? of that taping might help.
2. Getting to a mental space where it's okay, expected, almost exciting to watch a "typical" class day is helpful. Class doesn't have to be perfect. Getting excited about a hot mess of a class is also a pretty great place to be (a crappy class that can be analyzed is better than a crappy class I didn't tape so might not learn from).
3. Exposing the kids to the camera and any associated technology prior to the day(s) of taping makes the actual day of taping much easier.
4. I clearly have no idea what to call what I'm doing--filming? video-ing? taping? What do people call such a thing now that there's no film? No tape?
I'm looking forward to seeing how the analysis protocol unfolds in August. As I was going through the taping process, I was thinking through a number of ways I might like to use the camera more regularly in my class next year. Here's hoping for some inspiration as early August rolls around.
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