Use Video and AI to Grow as a Teacher

Announcer (00:01): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (00:04): Happy Tech Tool Tuesday, Episode 1007, Video Coaching in Elementary Teacher Education, brings us to the cutting edge of video feedback for new teachers.

Announcer (00:17): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (00:21): Today, we’re talking with Dr. Karen Terry, associate professor at Valdosta State University with more than 30 years in education. Karen, you’ve held nearly every role in education, classroom, building, district, and now professor.

What did each seat in that trip to where you are now as a professor teach you?

Dr. Karen Terry (00:43): I think in our profession, street credibility is really important. So that when a teacher in a setting asks the question, do you have any idea what this looks like or do you have any idea how long this takes? I think having that street credibility to be able to say, yes, as a matter of fact, I do.

Coming out of the classroom is so important and where I started and just learning so much. I also have to be really careful and cognizant of when I was in the classroom and what today’s classroom looks like. Having both of those things, the street credibility in terms of coming from the classroom and then becoming a leader, having to make some tough choices, having to make decisions in totality that aren’t always favorable, and then not having the power or control, right?

Sometimes you’re just handing down a decision. And then finally, a passion of filling the teacher pipeline and helping to prepare future educators. I think the most challenging part of that is not them finding a job.

We have 100% placement like many EPPs, right? The teacher shortage is real, but are they successful and happy in their careers three years later, five years later, 10 years later? That piece is really important to me.

So it’s been a journey and I love where I am right now. And I would say my passion for filling the teacher pipeline is really front and center at this point in my career.

Vicki Davis (02:09): So Karen, you said something really interesting. You said, I really want teachers to still be happy and enjoying their job after three years, because that’s a problem. I’m so glad that, actually, I had one of my students go to your program at Valdosta State, because Karen and I live close together, and this was quite some time ago.

She was a student I had in my first three years, and she said, oh, I told my professor that my teacher was Cool Cat Teacher. I said, oh, please, please don’t tell anything I did because the first three years I’ve made so many mistakes. So how are you helping teachers for that tough process?

Dr. Karen Terry (02:50): Reflection is so important. And that’s a running theme throughout our program. Helping our candidates to understand that you’re always learning, to be observant when they’re out in the field for the very first time.

Their field experience is first and then student teaching, and then when they have their own classrooms. Being aware that just because someone is a veteran teacher doesn’t mean they have all the answers. And just because someone is brand new on your team doesn’t mean they don’t have any answers.

Just trying to relay to be open, to be observant, and to reflect. And I’m hoping that those characteristics are the ones that are foundational that are going to carry them through their career.

Vicki Davis (03:27): So your program uses video coaching to train teacher candidates. For somebody who’s never seen it or heard of it, what does video coaching for teachers look like?

Dr. Karen Terry (03:39): Right now we’re using Edthena. We supply our candidates with a faculty supervisor, just like a face-to-face program would. The difference is our faculty supervisors are watching the video of our candidates teaching in the classroom.

What this allows us to do in Edthena, I’m able to download our observation tool, the TAPS standards in Georgia. We use the candidate version of the TAPS standards, and we also use a professional dispositions evaluative tool as well. The candidate will video themselves teaching.

The nice thing is that they can use the tool as often as they like. One of the very first things I found is it has taken away sort of the nervousness of, oh, I’m being observed today. I’m being evaluated today.

The tool has really empowered the candidate. They can use it as often as they like. What we found is most of the candidates will practice.

The mentors are wonderfully supportive. Most of the time, they’ll think, oh, that was a terrible lesson. I did a terrible job.

I’m so nervous about my faculty supervisor coming in or perhaps an assistant principal, and they’re able to watch the video. And most of the time, the response is, that wasn’t so bad. I did better than I thought I did.

Because you know how your mind is working while you’re teaching and you’re thinking, oh, oh gosh, this isn’t going well, or how did I recover? So it really has taken away the pressure, if you will, and it’s empowered the candidate to really use it as a tool to reflect on their teaching. What we like to say is to give themselves some grace that we’re not here for perfection.

We’re here to really look objectively at what happened in the classroom and how to improve it. So it’s really been a wonderful, wonderful tool.

One quick story. I had a mentor teacher that was assigned to one of our candidates who actually is in our physical footprint of Valdosta State. So this mentor was used to having face-to-face candidates with a face-to-face faculty supervisor. So when this candidate was assigned, the mentor teacher had a lot of questions about, how is this going to work?

You’re not going to come here. You’re going to video. What are we going to do?

Probably after the fourth or fifth back and forth, I did say to the mentor, if you’re uncomfortable, we can reassign the student. And the mentor said, no, no, no, I’m just curious and I really want to try it. Well, long story short, they had a wonderful relationship.

The mentor loved the tool and they used it together. She became mentor of the year. Her candidate nominated her for both programs, for both online and face-to-face.

And the mentor teacher talked about how much she enjoyed the process and that you couldn’t tell the difference between a traditional face-to-face candidate that she had hosted and this candidate, but specifically how much she enjoyed using the video coaching. And they used it together and they would talk through the videos. And she just talked about how much she enjoyed it and how much she learned with her own teaching.

And this was a real veteran teacher. That was a pretty cool experience.

Vicki Davis (06:56): It’s so wonderful because here in Georgia, I know that urban schools have their challenges, but a lot of us, when you have a small town or a small school, the challenge can be having access to some of the best mentoring and encouragement. So I’m curious, what do candidates learn from watching themselves on video?

Dr. Karen Terry (07:17): Edthena has AI coaching, an AI coaching cycle. And so what this does is we can help the student or the student can do it independently. We have areas or questions that a student may want to work on questioning, perhaps.

So they’re able to use the AI coaching edition when they upload their video and it takes them through a reflective practice. So it kind of forces them, if you will, to think critically about what they’re seeing and how they’re responding. And the really cool thing is they can take those notes away and they can have another video.

So they can then apply what they’ve learned. Again, it’s unlimited. So they can continue to grow and watch and reflect and really apply some of the things that they’re working on.

Vicki Davis (08:05): Do you have any stories about how the teacher said, okay, I’m going to change this as a result of AI coaching before they even took it to their mentor teacher?

Dr. Karen Terry (08:14): The one area is classroom management. Because they don’t have a lot of exposure or a lot of practice with classroom management, one case in particular, there was a student that had behavior issues and it was really challenging for the candidate. The number one thing was watching the mentor teacher in the classroom, how they were handling behaviors.

The student really wanted to learn more about how to handle certain behaviors in the classroom and what strategies. So in particular, that student was able to, each time she uploaded a video and the student was in the classroom, she was able to employ strategies that were even different from, in addition to what the mentor teacher was using. And they were really successful.

And it gave the candidate a lot more confidence in her teaching.

Vicki Davis (09:03): Karen, you research disruptive innovations in teaching. So when a new technology like video coaching shows up, how do you tell the difference between a tool and a fad?

Dr. Karen Terry (09:15): The only constant is change. Things come and go, right? Sometimes they’re just simply repackaged with a new name or a new label.

If you’ve been teaching long enough, you think, oh gosh, we used to call this something else back in the day. Now it’s back again, like fashion. I think the lasting impact is how we can tell the difference.

How do you stay fresh and above the fray and happy in your career and moving forward and how a tool is used? Because technologies are always changing, right? We started using video coaching, and then the AI coaching piece now has been added in.

We’re exploring that and seeing what the learning outcomes are. I think you have to be open and you have to try it before you even can determine if it’s a fad or a long-term tool that’s useful.

Vicki Davis (10:03): Karen, a lot of online education programs are really having an identity crisis because of the fill-in-the-blank-with-AI phenomenon. Students want to decide what’s busy work. They’re going to offload to AI, but they don’t understand that it is in that work often that you learn.

So what are your thoughts on that?

Dr. Karen Terry (10:18): When you’ve been doing this as long as we have, not so dissimilar to word processing when word processing, remember, then children are never going to learn how to spell or the use of the calculator, right? But in both of those cases, input was still vitally important. So my point with AI is that you still have to understand the prompt and what you’re asking.

And if I could, one of the first times that we were using AI years ago when I was still teaching face-to-face, and as usual, the students created stricter norms than I would have because they had a say in how we were going to use it. I remember one of my students saying as we were working through, this really isn’t a useful tool. So I said, well, tell me more about that.

And she said, well, it’s not giving me what I wanted. Long story short, she went back and said, but it did answer the question that I asked. So in that case, it really helped her to improve how she was designing questions, if that makes sense.

And I think another thing about AI too is, you know, I love the expression that AI will never replace you, but someone who knows how to use it will. I think that we embrace it. I encourage my students to use it, but we have very careful norms.

We want to model that so they’re modeling that for their P-12 students.

Vicki Davis (11:35): Today, we’ve been talking with Dr. Karen Terry, associate professor at Valdosta State University. Thanks for coming on the show, Karen.

Dr. Karen Terry (11:45): Thanks for having me.

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