Blogs This past week, we had the great fortune of co-leading a Pop-up learning event with district partners and amazing teacher leaders at Oceanside Schools on Long Island, New York.
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Fest participants craft paper airplanes alone, and then through iterating realize that working together results in all of their planes getting better.
We set out to investigate how to create deeper learning for teachers, and again we were both inspired and pushed in our thinking around using video to elevate and refine teacher practice. What’s great about these teachers and administrators is not only are they incredibly hospitable, but they love what they do and constantly strive to get better together.
In an attempt to be as generous as they are, we’re sharing some takeaways from our work together at this Pop-up TeamsFest, a day full of sharing practice, trying out new ways to learn, and reflecting on the use of video for professional learning – we call it #anewkindofpd – so check it out!
TAKEAWAY#1: Teachers Know Best
Oceanside teachers Jen Wolfe and Erin Gilrein, both National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs), ignited the shift to using video for professional learning to cultivate NBCTs in their district and have NBCTs mentor other teachers. Here’s one example of their brilliance in building educators’ capacity to provide meaningful, targeted, and specific feedback on video.
TAKEAWAY#2: Learning Through Video Does Impact Practice
Miriam Greenberg, from The Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, presented her findings from the Best Foot Forward Project. The study found that in using video, “teachers shared ownership over evidence (video of practice) increasing their self-efficacy, creating conditions for shared analysis with observers, and resulting in greater trust in the accuracy of the feedback.” That is, teachers were more motivated to alter practice as a result of their video work. For more on the study, watch and listen to a narrated slideshow of the full presentation.
TAKEAWAY #3: Teacher Leadership Yields Results
Jason Manning and Jessica Keegan showcased their work by walking us through how they’ve begun prompting teachers to “infiltrate” each others’ classrooms as a way to share and extend the use of promising instructional practices. Jessica humbly reminded us of the importance of building trust and community before asking folks to be vulnerable in sharing their practice. Jason meticulously helped us see how he and colleague Beth Zirogiannis designed a professional learning guide that connects the activities that a teacher does while on Teaching Channel Teams to both guide them and recognize their professional learning efforts.
Thank you to everyone at Oceanside for being such great partners in learning and leading the way. If you want to learn more about what we believe is valuable professional learning led by teachers, find us on Twitter or email [email protected].
