After our PD Day I was fired up to modify my teaching practice. While I feel that I am pretty honest with myself and generally self-aware, I wanted to see my teaching from the perspective of the student. In writing this blog I went to a classic website, Edutopia, and of course found an article speaking about the benefits of recording yourself teaching. As the author of the blog stated, “I not only learned more about myself and how I taught, I also learned more about the students in the class.”
Watching a recording of myself teaching was a scary thought but not a scary task. I am actually very happy that I did it and I honestly want to record myself every year if not every semester. Thank you to Elizabeth for the Swivel camera use and intuitive technology for an easy process!
A few things that I learned from recording myself:
- I switch between side commentary and class coursework pretty quickly and multiple times in this class. I wonder if this is actually good for some students in order to keep their attention span going or if it is actually distracting. I think this is why I have been labeled “chaotic” before. I have also had a student say that I allow tangents but somehow wrap them back into class, so I think this has been common to my teaching practice. It is definitely something to ponder!
- I am delighted by how comfortable the class feels on camera. My redirection of students who were hamming it up for the camera felt playful and not harsh. Similar to my transitions and corrections of technology being out, I was reminding students of procedures and expectations and not chastising them which I am happy to see. I sometimes feel I am too harsh.
- I mentioned an anecdote to a section of the class that involved body image and I do not like how that anecdote came across on video. I need to be more mindful about those types of anecdotes/comments. (I ended up circling back to this the next class period and was a little more vulnerable in my weight loss journey and gave some context to my comments from the previous class.)
- This is the second class that I have used Nearpod and I love it! I like that they can see the results but that I can leave the names anonymous. It also gets conversation going that I don’t think would have the same engagement had I just led the discussion with student volunteers answering the questions. It also gives them an opportunity to critique the way I write questions, which gets them engaged, so I like the feedback!
- I think I needed to intervene less and have the students who led the class in a sorting exercise work harder to get the class engaged. However, this was the first time doing this type of activity with the class so I think I needed to lead a little more than I would have liked.
Where is the footage Roddy!?
What a great blog post! (And a perfectly placed meme!)
In my undergrad and grad programs we were required to video tape all our lessons. We did this on VHS, yes- I'm dating myself, and then wrote reflections based on what we saw. During my first few years of teaching I would tape myself every once in a while, but I have since gotten out of practice…perhaps it's time to revisit this with some newer tech?! Thanks for the inspiration!
I frequently have my students record themselves speaking in Spanish so that they can rewatch and be aware of pronunciation and they can hear when they make mistakes. It's a great tool. I also watched recordings of myself when I taught from home during Covid, and even though some of it was cringe, I also realized some valuable things in my teaching. I never knew how fast I talk, and especially in another language. When I get excited, or when I feel like students are getting bored, I talk even faster. I think it's great to be more self aware in our teaching and recording is a great tool for such self awareness.
Love this… I feel like I need to do this when I teach psych realism but I will admit I am gonna have to cringe through the rewatching
That is such a great way to evaluate yourself. I am definitely going to try this, thanks for sharing!