The 3 Benefits to Video Coaching

I love video coaching because video coaching really allows you to do a lot of things. Um, but these three are really, really stand out to me. And so video coaching has really allowed me in my practice to depersonalize feedback by increasing objectivity with my, my folks that I coach. This doesn’t mean that I don’t give them personalized feedback. What I mean is that it makes feedback feel less of a personal attack and more of a collaborative effort. And so when teachers and coaches are able to analyze a video together or watch the same video, all of the information in that video becomes a data point and it becomes a concrete, um, piece of data that that folks can talk about. And it doesn’t become kind of a he said, she said, right, it’s right there. You’re watching it together, you’re seeing, you’re hearing the same things.

And this is really in opposition to a more traditional coaching model where a teacher’s perception of what was maybe happening in their lesson versus a coach’s perception of what was happening in their lesson might be different because it lives in your head instead of in that video. And so video really kind of takes that subjectivity out of it and creates this objective data point. And this, uh, results in this conversation that’s really rooted in a shared understanding of what happened in a lesson. Additionally, it increases teacher buy-in and reflection. When a teacher watches themselves teach through video, they get to see things and hear things that they may not have noticed in the moment. And those little moments become visible with video and really enhances a teacher’s awareness of their classroom as well as their practice. So this could be kind of twofold, right? You might see a student action that you didn’t notice in a lesson.

You might see a kid try to start to raise their hand in the back and then pull it down really quick that maybe you missed in the first time around. Or you might notice your tone in a video that you don’t hear when you’re doing it in, in real life, right? And so all of those pieces allow teachers to kind of see themselves through a different lens and be really reflective about their practice. And that in my, um, experience has really created a lot of buy-in as well. And then lastly, for you as a coach, video coaching allows you to more efficiently and effectively capture data. As a coach, often you have to choose what kind of data you’re gonna collect. When you go in and observe, are you gonna be scripting the whole lesson? In that case, you’re collecting a lot of data around what is said, but maybe missing some things about what is being done, and certainly taking all of the things like tone and facial expression out of that data point. Or you might go in looking for a very specific data point, like how many times a teacher calls on, um, you know, boys versus girls in the classroom, something like that. But at the end of the day, if you’re doing that kind of method of observation, you’re having to choose one data point over another. With video coaching, you are able to go in and capture everything, and then you can rewatch that video through different lenses based on your need.