At the Metropolitan School District of Decatur Township, weve discovered that a person of the pandemic-related changes well be keeping around is the use of video for instructor examinations. I think its a modification well see a lot of other districts making in the next year or two too.

Based on our experience, heres how I can see it playing out throughout the nation.

Over the last 2 years, educators have been pushed into all kinds of unexpected experiments as we have actually searched for ways to keep trainees safe while continuing to advance their education in the middle of an international pandemic.

1. Educators will get rid of anxieties about video assessments.

We started gradually, by asking our instructors to submit 10-minute clips of themselves teaching, along with a bit of reflection about the clip. Some of our teachers, and even entire schools, actually dove in and started tape-recording and sharing a lot of videos.

When you stack on making that recording at your location of work– and then asking people to see and reflect on that recording by earmarking a timestamp and sharing their ideas about what theyve captured– youre really asking people to put themselves out there.

Dr. Stephanie Hofer, Assistant Superintendent, Metropolitan School District of Decatur TownshipStephanie Hofer is the assistant superintendent at Metropolitan School District of Decatur (IN) Township. She can be reached on Twitter at @Steph_Hofer and email shofer@decaturproud.org.

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At the outset, we werent really sure how to finest utilize the platform and, to be sincere, we fidgeted about it. I believe many of us are a little uneasy with the concept of being recorded on video. When you overdo making that recording at your place of work– and then asking individuals to see and show on that recording by earmarking a timestamp and sharing their ideas about what theyve recorded– youre truly asking individuals to put themselves out there.

We began gradually, by asking our teachers to send 10-minute clips of themselves teaching, along with a bit of reflection about the clip. Some of our teachers, and even whole schools, actually dove in and started sharing a lot and tape-recording of videos. As we dug in throughout our district, we started utilizing it increasingly more because we saw our instructors reflecting more and providing more self-reflecting feedback on their own to much better their craft..

We had not intended on utilizing video to assess our teachers. A grant we protected nearly 5 years ago through the Teacher and School Leader (TSL) Incentive Program offered us access to the ADVANCEfeedback ® platform, which we initially used for instructional coaching.