In chapter nine, Willingham addresses the teacher as a learner and his or her impacts on students. He begins by restating a key principle that if you wish to improve you must practice. Willingham writes, "Teaching, like any complex cognitive skill, must be practiced to be improved." With that he reviews the idea that for memory to be effectively used you must first have sufficient room in your working memory, but you must also have the right factual and procedural knowledge in your long term memory. He then makes the connection that to be an effective teacher you must be able to balance information between working memory and procedural knowledge. For example, procedures such as handing out papers falls under the stored procedures in your long term memory. Other items like pedagogical knowledge are classified as important as well. Willingham asserts, however, that this knowledge is not truly useful if you do not use your memory to improve and practice your teaching.
The rest of the chapter tackles ways to use memory to practice and become more a more effective educator in the classroom. He stresses again that it is virtually impossible to become proficient at a mental task without extended practice. To practice he suggests a variety of tasks. All of the tasks require personal and outside feedback. He suggests to first find a partner you feel comfortable working with. After finding that partner, he suggests taping yourself teaching. Watch the tape alone and give yourself feedback about what surprises you, what you didn't already know about your class, and yourself. Willingham suggests that you should watch tapes of other teachers together with your partner. After watching other teachers, take the time to comment to one another about what you viewed. After becoming comfortable with your partner, he suggests you watch each others tapes. Finally, Willingham asks that you bring the comments back into your classroom and follow up. One of his last sections asks that you always try to improve and make a conscious effort to continue practicing at being a teacher.
I agree that taping yourself teaching a lesson is a powerful way to analyze your teaching technique. I have done this over the years for many projects. I am comfortable in front of a camera, but sometimes find that I have monitone voice when I talk to my students. No wonder they prefer to look out the window! Giving lots of expression and walking around the room while I talk keeps them a little more engaged with what I am saying. I also can see in the video who is paying attention and who is not. Usually my attention goes to the student with the highest off task behavior. I miss some of the other behaviors that go undetected while dealing with the first student(s). It would be nice to have a camera set up all the time, like in the hallways, to view whenever I wanted to review a lesson or incident. Big Brother would really be watching then!
ReplyDeleteI know that in my heart of hearts that there are a lot of advantages to video taping yourself. I believe that you can learn so much about yourself and the way you teach...what is effective and what is not. However, I can't hardly stand looking at myself in a picture or listening to a tape of my voice! I know that I need to step out of my comfort zone and do this.
ReplyDeleteI agree having a camera set up all of the time would be beneficial to help with behaviors in the classroom as well. You can ALWAYS use another set of eyes.
At my school the idea has been tossed around for the math teachers to tape one of their lessons a day and then upload it so that students who are absent or students that just didn't get the lesson could watch it again. I think this is a great idea... but I'm just not sure that I have the confidence for all to see!
We have an amazing teacher in our middle school/high school who videos her math lessons for subs to use when she is gone. That way she can feel confident that the lesson was presented they way she would if she were there. The sub can also pause and replay anywhere in the lesson for the students.
ReplyDeleteThat's a great idea! I give her a lot of credit on doing that. I was thinking in my head how hard this would be to do with a class but even harder if you are just taping yourself without your students present and not getting that feedback.
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