Watching Video Together
ED 102 - Semester-long Partner Assignment
Due Dates: Letter #1 - March 7, Letter #2 - April 25
A colleague of ours once said, “teachers are liars.” What he meant was that reflective teachers
have a tendency to view the lesson they just taught in either overly positive or overly negative
lights. This stems from the human desire to make sense of things; to interpret and constantly rewrite the events we experience until we arrive at a coherent narrative. This is not a bad thing, but
as teachers we have an obligation to “dig into” our teaching to better understand and see all of
the activity in our classrooms.
Consider Jerome Bruner’s comments: “One of the great triumphs of learning (and of teaching) is
to get things organized in your head in a way that permits you to know more than you “ought” to.
And this takes reflection, brooding about what it is that you know. The enemy of reflection is the
breakneck pace – the thousand pictures.” (2004, “Narratives of Science,” p.98)
In this assignment, you will leverage Joseph McDonald’s calls for making teaching a text by
creating a classroom video of your teaching. You will select a short clip from your teaching and
work with a colleague to “know more than you ought to” about this particular moment and how
that moment relates to your students, their thinking, the curriculum, and your teaching more
generally.
Video selection and reflection
A common question is “what should I videotape?” Cindy Ballenger writes, “The most useful
time to tape is anytime during the day when [students] are taking initiative, when they are
thinking out loud, often when they are working with others, and when they are asking questions.
These are the times when they are most likely to say something you don’t expect and therefore
provide you with a view into their thinking and their concerns. These are times you can
especially benefit from having the opportunity to mull over their words” (2009, p. 59).
There are two general approaches to selecting times to videotape:
1 Making sense of something puzzling: When there is something of interest you want to
capture for reflection - a particular student, a part of class (e.g., debriefing at the end of
the lesson), small group dynamics, etc. These are commonly occurring moments that you
are interested in unpacking to know more.
2 Anticipating something interesting: This is when you have an upcoming lesson you want
to examine, you are planning a whole-class discussion, you are trying something new, etc.
These are times where you set up the camera because you can anticipate something about
that lesson that you want to review in more detail later.
1
For this assignment, you must tape your teaching, including evidence of your students’ thinking,
and select a short segment of that tape for work with your partner.
Watching your video - selecting a segment
We recommend that you do something to help yourself become comfortable with watching
yourself on video. It may be a few days between the time that you film and when you watch the
video. You may want to watch the video at least once in an informal setting, without taking notes
or analyzing too deeply what you see. You may want to consider the following:
1 What are you most curious to see in this video? What do you expect to see?
2 What are you hoping to learn by watching this video?
To select a clip, re-watch the video and create a double-entry notebook on what you see. Use
these notes to help you chronicle the events in the classroom. After you have finished viewing,
review both your notes and the video. Find the moments that help you to learn the most about
your development as a teacher and about your students’ thinking.
Select a 3-5 minute clip to share with your partner. It is fine to reuse clips you’ve discussed in
other courses (e.g., ED 121, 122, etc.).
Watching your video together - with a partner
You should plan two sessions with your partner - one by March 1, one by April 18 (This allows
you time to write letters and respond).
In each session, one of you will present your video. Be sure to include background and context
for your partner:
● Provide details on the unit, lesson, class, and students.
● Bring student work from the lesson and any other associated materials.
● Give your partner a general idea of why you selected this clip.
Watching classroom video can be noisy, so transcribe segments of interest if you think that will
help the conversation.
You should watch the video once, with the partner commenting on what is s/he noticed, what
s/he is curious about, and where you can offer any clarification. In this conversation, allow space
to delve into the dynamics of the moment - all the while, making sense before making judgment.
The selection from McDonald below will help you think about how to use this time.
2
Re-watch the video after your first discussion, digging deeper into the moment and transitioning
into that place where you “know more than you ought to.”
Be sure to take notes on this discussion, and to think about how you will respond to each other in
writing about what you saw and talked about.
Reflecting on the video in writing
The partner will prepare a “Dear Colleague” letter commenting on the video and the discussion.
This letter should take care to be descriptive and without judgments. This is a place for your
partner to formalize thinking and questions about the clip you shared. Your partner will submit
this letter to you, and you will respond in writing.
Due dates
Round one: Due March 7 - by this date you must watch one video together and have the
exchange in writing. Prepare accordingly.
Round two: Due April 25 - by this date you must watch one video together and have the
exchange in writing. Prepare accordingly.
Email all letters and responses to your seminar leader.
Final Thoughts
Watching video together can be one of the most rewarding, challenging, puzzling, and frustrating
activities as a teacher. It is hard to see oneself “in action.” As Bruner suggests, careful attention
often uncovers more than we “ought” to know, and in these complexities we can grow as
teachers. Through your developing skills of collegial discourse, your commitment to making
sense before making judgment, and your use of the triangle as a way to organize what you see,
hopefully you will find this task supremely helpful.
Our hope is that this assignment models the importance of reading teaching and the power of
video as the text of that teaching. As you move into your careers, we hope that watching video of
you and your students alone and with colleagues becomes an important part of your continual
development as a skilled and reflective practitioner.
______________________
From Learning to Read Teaching (McDonald, 1992, p. 17)
Textmaking
3
If teaching is a text, then it is a fast and evanescent one, authored serially minute by
minute. It may be said to linger overnight in the memories and homework of both teacher and
students, or in the air of the classroom – as any teacher knows who has stayed past closing time
on a Friday, or returned for some forgotten sheaf of papers on a Sunday. Still, it is only air, and
holds only so long – as any teacher knows, too, who has returned to the classroom in, say, midJuly, when the papers on the wall or in the desks seem forlorn and the creaks in the floor alien
among the sounds of summer outside. Reading such a text, then, must be a matter of turning air
into something more tangible. Hence the observer’s notes.
Teachers themselves can engage in this textmaking. Textmaking is […] what my
colleagues and I deliberately sought to do [… when] we first decided to tape-record our stories
and conversations about teaching […]. This is what thousands of teacher-writers do when they
keep teaching journals or simply take notes on their teaching […]. This is what a few, such as
Vivian Paley, do when they turn on tape recorders in their classrooms. This is what some, such
as Chris Zajac, do when they admit writers into their classrooms. This is what many do who
videotape their teaching or allow others to do so.
Gripping
The metaphor is meant to suggest that teaching, even when rendered tangible in the form
of a text – whether diary entry, bit of videotape, or other artifact of the actual process – still
wants to be running off. What the reader of teaching must do is to hold it steady, often by
bringing it into the grip of some set of ideas, some perspective, some value – often supplied by
some other text. The point of this gripping is not to capture the teaching in some pure state – to
give it a “timeless” reading, so to speak […]. The point is to rather, by means of some external
point of reference, to inquire about the text’s status in time: At this moment, in this cultural
milieu, amid these circumstances, as compared to this point of reference, what does this text
mean?
Doubting
This is the emotional antonym of the believing that teachers rely upon to sustain their
teaching. In even the most courageous and reflective teaching, believing takes precedence over
doubting in the sense that the teacher tempers his or her believing with doubt, not the other way
around. Of course, the reflective teacher faces up to failure every time he or she reads a set of
papers, or thinks rigorously about what Carmen and Eric have actually learned, or dares to
subject bright plans to critical light. But then, at least in the best circumstances, he or she returns
wholeheartedly to believing in the papers’ signs of progress, in Carmen’s and Eric’s potential to
pull through, and in the efficacy of the plans. In the end, belief predominates [….].
Reversing the emphasis of teaching itself, doubt takes precedence in reading teaching.
The reader of any text must let doubt have an edge over belief in order to gain the upper hand in
the experience; otherwise the reader cannot be said to be reading at all, but rather undergoing
manipulation by a text […]. When the text to be read is drawn from one’s own teaching,
however, this process is difficult and painful […], because doubting what one must also believe
4
involves a kind of contortion. Even when the text is drawn from another’s work, reading
teaching takes some courage: an almost physical capacity to ride the thrust of the other’s story,
yet hold oneself apart from it. This is why some teachers experience discomfort reading others’
accounts of teaching or even observing others teach.
References
McDonald, J. (1992) Teaching: Making sense of an uncertain craft. New York: Teachers
College
Press.
Bruner, J. (2004). Narratives in science. In Scanlon, E., Murphy, P., Thomas, J., & Whitelegg, E.
(Eds.), Reconsidering science learning (pp. 90-98). New York: Teachers College Press.
Ballenger, C. (2009). Puzzling moments, teachable moments: Practicing teacher research in
urban classrooms. New York: Teachers College Press.
5