Using Video to Improve Classroom Practices

In this Kappan article, Newark school leader Paul Bambrick-Santoyo touts the usefulness of video analysis to improve teaching. “Small and specific changes – from the way teachers address students’ wrong answers to where in the classroom an instructor stands – have outsize consequences,” he says. “Video changes the game by capturing these small actions so they can be reviewed and improved.”

Bambrick-Santoyo urges educators to follow the lead of athletic coaches and use video as a teaching tool. He describes the way NFL quarterback Joe Montana’s offensive coach pored over years of game videos, discovered a flaw in Montana’s passing strategy, and convinced him to make a change – resulting in dramatic improvement throughout the 1989 season culminating in a Super Bowl victory. 

Bambrick-Santoyo tells how a principal watches a video clip of a lesson with the teacher and they notice how three students in the corner lost focus while the teacher was working with one boy. The teacher hadn’t noticed it in the moment, but could see it clearly in the video and liked the principal’s suggestion to toss a question to one of the disengaged students. “Oh, that makes total sense,” she said. 

Video is objective evidence, which helps teachers get beyond being defensive about an observer’s opinions about a lesson. “Sitting side-by-side to watch the same video footage and consider the same questions does a powerful job of conveying the message that they are working toward a shared goal,” says Bambrick-Santoyo. He quotes a teacher who was surprised that video showed that she didn’t seem enthusiastic about her content. “I looked like the kind of teacher that I had always wanted not to be,” she said, and went about changing her practice.

Video clips can also be paused and replayed, addressing questions like, What might you have said instead? What would you do next time? Let’s practice that. Making videos is easier than ever because of improved technology in cell phones and flip-cams. The only barrier is policies in some districts forbidding taping of lessons, stemming from teachers’ fears of it being used as a “gotcha.” Bambrick-Santoyo urges educators to move past these fears by making sure that videos are always used as a constructive coaching tool. 

“In Practice Leadership: If It’s Good Enough for Joe…” by Paul Bambrick-Santoyo in Phi Delta Kappan, March 2013 (Vol. 94, #6, p. 68-69), www.kappanmagazine.org; Bambrick-Santoyo can be reached at pbambrick@uncommonschools.org.

From the Marshall Memo #479