How peer video coaching is completely changing how our teachers teach

The article that i read was written  by Diane Lauer at eschoolnews.com, and it discussed using peer video coaching to help with teachers and professional development.  This has been the first time in a long time that i read an article and thought to myself “wow I really want to do that in my school”.  The article talks about how teachers would record themselves teaching and upload the video to a website for their peers and peer coaches to view and offer advice on their teaching habits.

While reading this article I got to thinking how great it would be to record videos and share them with other grade levels.  We have all had those moments where students ask us “why do we have to do this?” Most of the time we just tell the students “just because”, but how great would it be to show students lessons from higher grade levels and ask them to identify what concepts they are currently using to be able to solve the higher grade level problems.

What I also thought of is using this concept to help bring other teachers into your  classroom.  Our district will be making the 1-1 leap next year with seventh and eighth grade.  With this being a new concept, teachers would be able to videotape certain lessons/subjects, load them up to the cloud for other teachers to see and use.

There is drawbacks to using a peer video coaching concept in my opinion.  There needs to be a lot of faith and support between administration and teachers in order for a concept like this to work, if it is not there then the concept will never take off.  I for one know that a concept like this will be very difficult to get going in Valley View because most of the teachers in our district fear that administration will use this as a tool to nit pick every flaw and use it against them in evaluations.  That may not be admins intentions, but that is the culture that they have created in the school district over the past five years.


Lauer, D. (2016, February 02). How peer video coaching is completely changing how our teachers teach. Retrieved April 20, 2016, from http://www.eschoolnews.com/2016/02/02/how-peer-video-coaching-is-completely-changing-how-our-teachers-teach/