Using Video Recording as a Coaching Tool

Have you ever been given feedback that you passionately wanted to defend and reason with? Perhaps the person observed you at a bad time or that person didn’t see everything? Have you been on the giving side of that feedback and been met with an unenthusiastic reaction to your insight? I know I have been on both sides. Glenna Wyatt recently shared a blog series with me that helped me better understand the emotions that can go with receiving feedback. It gave me more of an understanding of the science behind the emotions that take place when receiving feedback about one’s teaching and vice versa. There are several blog posts in a series about this topic from Thinking Collaborative. I encourage you to read them to learn more.

In this blog post, I'll share my experience of using video to help a teacher reflect and grow.

I was discussing a coaching observation with a teacher about how he managed response rates and monitored students’ understanding. One observation I made was that when he posed a question to the class, multiple students were calling out and it wasn’t clear what the correct answer was and it wasn’t clear the students knew what the correct was. When I discussed this with the teacher, he was satisfied with the number of students participating and thought it was an effective strategy. He was passionate about his abilities and I didn’t mean to make him feel otherwise. It was difficult to explain with objectivity the lack of monitoring, so I suggested we record a portion of his lesson. He was open to that and we set up a time period, along with a focus question for me to collect data about. As I learned from Jim Knight’s 6 Big Ideas of Coaching, in order for the teacher to have buy-in, the teacher has to create the goals he wants to focus on.

On the day of the recording, we used the teacher’s iPhone and I brought an iPhone tripod. We decided to record the first ten minutes of class. While his iPhone recorded the class, I collected data in a two column chart, capturing the teacher’s actions and the students’ actions.

We met again the next day and watched the video together. I asked him to share with me what he noticed in regards to his focus question. He also wanted to learn more about the instructional framework in regards to managing response rates and monitoring students. This was related to the initial coaching observation he received. He was able to identify a few aspects but missed a crucial moment. I asked him to pause it and asked what he thought about the question he posed to the class. He said he heard one student call out the correct answer and that was all he needed so he moved on. I asked, “How did you monitor what the rest of the students knew about that question?” He thought for a moment and said he had no idea if they knew it or not. That was an Aha moment for him and he was able to make a connection to the scale on our instructional framework in regards to monitoring students' understanding. I asked him to brainstorm more ways he could increase the number of students he monitors. We had a discussion about purposeful questions and ways to manage response rates in order to maximize how he monitors students’ understanding and engagement.

We continued watching his recording and had a few more discussions and ahas. It was a good exercise in objectivity and being able to focus on the actions taking place rather than just hearing what I had to share.

As an instructional coach, I differentiate my coaching techniques to meet the needs of the teachers I work with. Some may need the recording option, some are able to reflect on data displays. I find that knowing, learning and experimenting with a variety of coaching methods has a great impact on my effectiveness as a coach and ultimately on teachers' effectiveness in the classroom. And it all impacts our students in positive ways, which is my ultimate goal as a coach.