Teachers are human, after all, and they don't like to be bored any more than the rest of us.
As we report, teachers in the Washington, D.C., public schools can now watch their best performing colleagues at work in the classroom.
Instead of setting up a camera at the back of the room and film a whole class, C-Span style, the district teamed up with a reality television company. The result is a collection that showcases a range of teachers, subjects and grade levels. In interviews filmed in a style familiar to anyone who's watched “Survivor†or “The Bachelor,†the teachers explain a little about what they are trying to get their students to learn, and then quick jump cuts land on snippets from the classroom.
Most of the videos will be available only to Washington teachers who have access to a password protected portal. Jill Nyhus, senior director of technology in Washington, said that the district wanted to show parents and teaching recruits, though, a few samples of what happens in D.C. classrooms. So, the district has made a few available on its Web site and YouTube.
There is Aika Aggarwal, a fourth-grade teacher at Turner Green Elementary, delivering a lesson on decimals.
As much as showing the content of the classes, the videos help teachers identify techniques for organizing a lesson or eliciting sophisticated questions from students.
In this video, the preschool teacher Scott Harding demonstrates how he explains “content clearly†to his young students at Maury Elementary School.
The District of Columbia is not the only public school district or educational organization that is using video for the professional develop ment of teachers. Teaching Channel, a nonprofit, has amassed more than 500 videos of teachers who are recommended by school districts, teaching organizations and a panel of advisers.
On one of its videos on YouTube, Loredana Wicketts has multiple objectives in her fourth-grade history lesson about Harriet Tubman.
And several charter management organizations, which have tried to anatomize some teaching technique into a science as much as an art, rely heavily on video to help train new recruits.
Uncommon Schools, which runs 32 schools, mostly in Brooklyn and Newark, show videos like these during teacher training.
A YouTube video shows Juliana Worrell, a first-grade teacher, with her students at North Star Academy Vailsburg Elementary School.
KIPP, one of the most well-known charter school chains, last year filmed 10 of its exemplary teachers from around the country and is in the process of building a library for all KIPP teachers.
