Finally, my school will start with only a few teachers – and they will have opportunities to observe one another – but sometimes I think seeing more modeling, in more places, allows for a-ha moments that couldn’t have come out of the classroom down the hall because it’s too personal.

Great discussion though!

Seriously, if there were a “Randomize” button which, when clicked, delivered a random five-minute passage from a random teacher’s classroom, I would plant myself in front of my computer for a week and never stop clicking.

I understand each situation might call for something different for each person. What I am getting at is if the videos are to be shared for others to use, what might the essential elements of each video be?

Unless you’re bored with this thread already. In that case, move on. I understand.

You are right – teaching is heavily contextualized. That’s the first thing I thought when I read Dan’s post. I think teachers need access to research-based and time tested practices from other teachers. Not all of the strategies will work for them, but it at least gives teachers strategies they can try in their classrooms. I think theory is easier to implement when there are ideas about how to implement the theory in real contexts – even if they exact context doesn’t match your own.

I’ve also seen people go too far with the idea that good teaching practices are contextualized.

You use basketball as your starting point. Basketball has no context. A travel is a travel whether it’s done in Texas or Toronto, by Y. Ming or A. Iverson, at home or away. That basketball is abstracted from context lends itself perfectly to the idea of video instruction.

This does not apply to teaching. Ken’s example nails this. What works or is appropriate will be different for each class, for each teacher for each community (by community I’m talking about another whole set of variables – race, wealth, etc). Teaching is heavily contextualised – isn’t this one of the conclusions of the “student-centered learning” enlightenment?

During my teacher training I remember an instructor trying to help me with behaviour management. She demonstrated how to “be firmer” with them. I tried it. I just didn’t feel like me, or fit with my budding pedagogy, and I stopped doing it. Very unhappy instructor. I used an approach that felt right to me (a reciprocal respect approach I suppose…). It worked (and I actually gained the respect of the instructor too).

As a side note it’s made me think of using video next year in those first 2 weeks of the year when we’re mostly focused on ‘developing good habits’ where students are given a situation (entering the classroom, asking a question, handling frustration etc.) and they need to make a video for how to do it (boring) and one for how not to do it (fun).

I’d be willing to collect permission slips (which at my school, would be no small task even if they needed parental consent to pick a free ipod touch from a big ole’ bouncy castle) and try to shoot the video, post it online etc. I think it could set up nice for a regular kind of thing, similar as “what can you do with this.” Haters need not participate, that’s all.

I wish more teachers collaborated and invested time into the professional and intellectual community of educators. If anything, we would see diverse pedagogies and realities – I feel like teacher prep programs have a mainline stance they do not like to deviate from.

Interesting post, Dan.

TeacherC
educatorblog.wordpress.com
twitter.com/teacherc