Tara Goulet: Professional development with videos of one’s own practice

Tara Goulet uses videos of one’s own practice with teacher leaders, coaches, and assistant principals to develop their leadership practice. These leaders are part of New Leaders’ Emerging Leaders Program that operates in New York, N.Y., and in 11 other cities across the country.

“We used the videos that they captured of themselves within our group sessions to talk about adult leadership,” says Goulet, director of the Emerging Leaders Program. Goulet uses a video viewing protocol to provide a framework for participants to share videos of their own practice with other emerging leaders in both face-to-face and virtual sessions.

“Let’s say I was the person who videoed my leadership team,” she says. “I would be the person introducing the clip to the group, setting it up for them, and telling them what they are going to see in the video.”

As participants view the video, they reflect on specific questions relating to the focus of the session, and, after the video, the group debriefs and provides feedback. “Then we ask the person who was involved in the video to reflect on what the feedback means to them — how it changes how they view things — and they sort of step back and find there are places in the video that they hadn’t even thought about before,” she says. In addition, Goulet directly addresses participants’ concerns: “When you are using videos of one’s own practice, you have to be mindful of the vulnerability in the room — to create a space and say it out loud: This is uncomfortable.”

Goulet emphasizes the importance of establishing a climate of trust as participants view videos of their colleagues’ practice: “It’s a very different experience to view your own video with teachers that you know — in front of a group of people that you become intimately connected to — than it is to view a video of people that you don’t know.”

Building trust is the key to open, honest communication. “People want to be nice at first because you are sitting right next to that person,” she says. “But it takes building trust in that community for participants to get to that place where they feel like they can talk honestly.” To speed the process, Goulet asks participants to view each other’s videos individually with headphones, then provide feedback one-on-one or in groups of three. Feedback can last as long as one to two hours per session.

“Having never done this before, I was skeptical because we only require a three- to five-minute video clip. I found myself surprised, and the participants were surprised as well, that you can capture so much within three to five minutes. You can capture communication, or lack thereof, body language, messaging — what is transparent and effective versus that which isn’t. You can capture outcomes, clear strategies, and next steps.”

Michael Wilson: Coaching with videos of others’ practice

Michael Wilson, co-director of New Leaders’ Aspiring Principals Program and director of its Principal Institute, uses videos of other leaders’ practice to coach aspiring principals who have gone through New Leaders’ Emerging Leaders Program and are ready for the next step. That next step is a one-year residency at a site where they take on increasing administrative and leadership responsibilities while at the same time refining their leadership practice through seminars and job-embedded coaching.

Aspiring principals, working in cohorts of 10 to 20 participants, meet with members of other partner districts for a three-week summer workshop and one-week workshops during the fall and spring. Ten city districts participate in the program, and the workshops rotate from city to city. Coaching is an integral part of each workshop and continues once participants are back at their school site.

Before each coaching session, participants view a short video of practice Wilson selects for them and study it to see how it applies to their specific situation and consider why Wilson referred it. Wilson gives participants a list of questions and things to look for in the video and asks them to reflect in writing. “When I come back to the school — which I would call the laboratory — then I would look for some of the things in their reflections, and we use the video to center our conversations,” he says.

Over the past few years, these conversations have become less scripted as Wilson allows the learner an opportunity to share more of his or her own aha moments and other observations. However, Wilson still controls the conversation. “If I see they are going in a different direction than I want them to go — not looking at what I wanted them to see — at that point, I might do a follow-up and narrow their focus with more questions,” he says.

Wilson chooses videos that are relevant to leaders who are still developing their practice. “I look for the videos where someone may say, ‘We did it this way and it didn’t work, we tried this way and it didn’t work, and we are still kind of rebounding.’ ” In addition, he looks for video examples of leaders participants can relate to so that they will be encouraged to try new things and learn from the leaders’ mistakes.

“I have found that it is one thing for me to talk about my previous experience of being a principal, but it is another thing to actually be able to show them examples that are contemporary and relative to their experience — seeing someone else live that experience and successfully navigate it.”

National School Reform Faculty protocols

The National School Reform Faculty is a professional development initiative focused on developing collegial relationships, encouraging reflective practice, and rethinking leadership in restructuring schools, all in support of increased student achievement. Its website offers free protocols at www.nsrfharmony.org/protocol/a_z.html.

A protocol consists of agreed-upon guidelines for a conversation. This type of structure permits very focused conversations to occur. The following two protocols are recommended for use with videos of practice:

• Peeling the Onion: www.nsrfharmony.org/protocol/doc/peeling_onion.pdf.
• Consultancy: www.nsrfharmony.org/protocol/doc/consultancy.pdf.

Mariah Cone: Leadership development with videos of others’ practice

Mariah Cone uses videos of other leaders’ practice in her work as national director of School Leaders Network, a collaboration among school leaders to understand and solve problems of practice in their schools.

Cone meets monthly with cohorts of 10 to 12 principals to develop leadership practice. She places one or two video clips at the center of each session. “The first step is to be really clear about what you want to accomplish in that session,” she says, “then I make sure that that the video clips tightly align to what I want them to walk away with.”

Cone says it is important to create a meaningful context for the video before viewing and to address anything that is going to be different from participants’ own school setting. Next, she provides guidelines to focus observations during viewing. “I will watch a clip two or three times to ask, ‘What did I look for that got me the most amount of evidence around this question or outcome?’ And then that is what I tell them: ‘This is what I want you to look for and collect some evidence on. How do you see that in action?’ ” Finally, Cone cultivates an environment that supports critical reflection: “We really have to create that space where they can take it in because those videos are so loaded with content. If they haven’t had time to get their mind right, or if they haven’t taken enough of a pause from the fire that they are dealing with on campus, they can’t attend to the video.”

After viewing the video, she asks participants to discuss the leader’s actions and reflect on their own practice as part of small- and whole-group discussions. She uses a protocol such as Peeling the Onion (see box on p. 44) to isolate problems participants face. “That helps us transition from the ideal to the real,” she says. Cone ends each video viewing session with time to reflect individually in writing. “Even people who are highly reflective in leadership often don’t have time to pause and ask: So what does this really mean, and how do I think about this?”

“I think that, all too often, we ground our work in the words of others, but not necessarily in that visual. I think videos of practice open up a lens to be able to say, ‘We are not going to tell you what this is. We are going to show you.”

About New Leaders and School Leaders Network

New Leaders ensures high academic achievement for all students by developing transformational school leaders. School Leaders Network provides ongoing leadership development for principals to make sure all children graduate with college and career-ready skills. With support from MetLife Foundation, the two organizations are partners in researching the impact of using video to train and support school leaders.

For more information:

• New Leaders: www.newleaders.org.
• School Leaders Network: https://connectleadsucceed.org.
• MetLife Foundation: www.metlife.com/about/corporate-profile/citizenship/metlife-foundation/index.html.