Teaching Videos - a Weird Coping Mechanism

Note:  This is a very "teacher-y" post.  If you aren't a teacher, feel free to keep reading, but don't expect to get much out of it.

The first time I heard about "flipping the classroom," I thought it seemed like something I might like to do every now and then, particularly if the practice problems for a concept were difficult enough that they needed more guided practice than independent practice.  I made a list of 5-6 topics I thought I might like to do it with, but I never did anything with that list.  That summer, I just could not summon the motivation to make those videos.  Perhaps I was daunted by the idea of recording my voice; perhaps I couldn't envision students watching the videos at home and figured I would have to reteach it anyway.  The bottom line, though, was that I didn't really believe in the concept enough to follow through with it.  That was 2015, and the videos never got made.

Enter the pandemic.  Teachers were challenged in ways we never had been before.  First, was the remote spring.  As a science teacher, the challenge was even more daunting because hands-on experiences were not possible.  I could demonstrate some things from my house, but there were a few that weren't feasible to show across a computer screen (black light demonstrations, lasers bouncing off of mirrors, color mixing, static electricity).  We made it work as well as we could, and I did end up making one video - not for the purpose of flipping the class but because I couldn't get my computer close enough to "the board" when I was live streaming, so I premade a video of the calculations I needed to show in a place where I could put the camera closer to the writing.

Then, came the hybrid year, a time I still don't know how to talk about with anyone who didn't do it.  As we split focus between the students who joined us from home and those in front of us, we exhausted our brain capacity each and every day.  We worked as hard as we could possibly work and made it (sort of) work while praying for the day we wouldn't have to do it anymore.  Then, we found that it was possible that virtual teaching might be part of our post-pandemic future.  Ideas were tossed around about asynchronous learning (which means pre-prepared videos).  I didn't want to even think about the possibility, but I had to adapt to the idea just in case; so I did what I do - I made a list.  I made a list of every topic I teach and what kind of video (document camera over my hand while I worked through a problem, voice-over images, etc.) might be best suited to teach each topic.  When I was done, my list had 118 items.

Thankfully, by the end of that school year, our administration had listened to our feedback and decided not to pursue this virtual plan.  But my list was already made, and I reasoned that it wasn't going to hurt to have a video pool in case I was absent one day or a student had an extended absence.  That summer, I made 63 videos, some of which do double duty because I teach some of the same topics in both 8th grade and physics, making it effectively 78 videos.  I didn't do a lot with them that year, except occasionally send one to someone who was out or asked for extra help.  The following summer, I made 15 or so more.  Last year, I gave everyone access to them on our LMS, and they were used pretty well (more on that in another paragraph), but because I didn't have one for everything, there were still some limitations on how I could use them.  This summer, I set out to finish the rest of the list.  When I left for camp, there were still two left to make, and I finished those the week we got back!  I now how have 118 videos of me teaching concepts (with images) or working example problems. 

So, you may be wondering how they will be used if we don't have a virtual program.  Here are a few ways these videos can be / have been helpful.

1. Mitigating Student Absences - Ask any teacher in America and they will tell you that attendance has become a real problem since the return from the pandemic.  It's not quite as bad at GRACE as other places, but we have certainly seen an upward trend in absences.  Families go on trips more frequently, and more students are on traveling teams that pull them out of class frequently.  When students send me emails informing me that they will be out Thursday and Friday of next week, I am now able to respond with, "Read pages 46-48 and watch the video on Free Fall."  Is it the same as being in class?  Absolutely not; nothing replaces real live teaching with peer interaction and retrieval opportunities with checks for understanding.  But it mitigates the absence.  They aren't coming back with no idea what we did while they were gone, and when they meet with me, it takes less time.
2. Study Help - Some students have used these videos to help them review things as they study.  In particular, the videos with math problems worked out have proved helpful.  They can pause, do step 1, then continue the video to see if they did it correctly.  Instant feedback!  They didn't all use them for this, but I know some of them did because I got an email telling me about an error and a student who thanked me for them in a teacher appreciation week card.
3. Squeezing in Content - At the end of the semester, we are often running out of time to cover everything.  Or sometimes, we are pushing up against a break, and I cut something out in order to end the chapter just before it.  These videos will give me a chance to include some of the less complex things that don't need as much explicit instruction from me by assigning the video as homework.

So, now that I have told you that I'm glad to have these videos at my disposal, let me set your teacher mind at ease.  I am not going to recommend that you do this, and I would actively resist any effort by administrators to push teachers into doing this.  

For one thing, it was something I chose to do with my own time out of fear and chronic stress.  I still don't know if it was a healthy coping mechanism.  I mean, it is certainly healthier than drinking or overeating or compulsive shopping, but anything can be unhealthy.  (I learned that many years ago when I coped with grief by crocheting 28 scarves and giving myself carpal tunnel syndrome in my right wrist until I was in the craft store and said out loud, "Beth, step away from the yarn. You have a problem.").   Second, to do this right takes many, many hours.  I'm not sure people recognize how long it takes to edit video. It can take an hour to get just ten minutes of completed video.  The quickest ones were the math ones because it was just my hand under a document camera while I talked my way through solving the problem, so they required no editing afterward.  If you want to dip your toe in the water, maybe start with videos like that.  Lastly, video teaching is not the future.  I'm going write that again and use something I hate using, all caps.  VIDEO TEACHING IS NOT THE FUTURE.  We should have learned that from the pandemic, but I'm not sure we did.  As I said earlier, these videos mitigate people's absences, but they are not the same as engaging a class of students in real teaching.  Research shows this, and it IS a hill on which I am willing to die.  Do this if it is something you want to do, and enjoy the benefits I described earlier, but do not pressure yourself to do it because you think you should.