The articles for this week's reading in tech class focused on how teachers can improve their teaching by watching video footage of themselves. Both authors seemed to take a social justice approach to classroom instruction, and echoed the ideas we encounter in many of our other classes: that to reach learners of diverse backgrounds, we must be rigorous and inquisitive with our own teaching practices, and consider ways to enrich our curriculum and classroom management tools.
I recently filmed two days of my teaching for my PACT learning segment. I watched the videos last week, and found the footage very helpful. It was encouraging to note that I did not cringe during the whole segment, although there were certainly a few cringe-worthy moments. I came away with a few solid ideas about areas for further development in my teaching:
1) Voice: My voice sounded high to me, which may be partly due to the sound quality of the camera. However, I do want to work on projecting more when I speak to the class. I think this is easier the more relaxed that I am -- I am banking on the fact that this is a function of teaching over time.
2) Annunciation: Related to voice/tone, I noticed that I often ate my words at the end of a sentence when I was giving instructions. I chalk this one up to tentativeness as well, but it has been helpful to keep this in mind over the last few days. I have made a point of fully pronouncing all my words and speaking as clearly as possible.
3) Gaze: Along with eating my words, I noticed that I would glance down if I felt unsure about what I was saying. This also lent a tentative quality to my stance, which is not a good quality when you are standing in front of urban youth.
4) Lastly, I of course noticed which students I wasn't noticing during the lesson. I imagine that this will be an area to work on for all my time as a teacher, and in this sense, I think that videotaping is very helpful.
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