Enhancing Elementary Education Training With GoReact: Interactive Learning for Future Teachers

PRESENTERS

Dr. Nicholas Catania

Dr. Nicholas Catania is an Associate Professor and Program Manager of Elementary Education at State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota. His research focuses on teacher preparation for social justice as well as equitable policies and practices for the inclusion, advancement, and dignity of marginalized populations including LGBTQ+ children and families. He has over 15 years of teaching experience in K-12 and higher education settings and works with teacher candidates and in-service teachers coaching them to improve their teaching practices in the clinical space. His research has been presented at multiple national and international conferences; most notably American Educational Research Association (AERA), Council for Exceptional Children (CEC), and National Association for Multicultural Education (NAME). He has also served in leadership roles for the AERA Queer Sig and the Florida Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (FACTE) Conference Research Committee.

Dr. Kristina DeWitt

Dr. Kristina DeWitt is the Chair of the Education department, bringing over 25 years of experience in the field. She holds a Ph.D. in Literacy Education from George Mason University and a Master’s degree in special education from the University of Mary Washington. Throughout her career, Dr. DeWitt has gained extensive experience in curriculum development and has worked with student teachers both in the U.S. and abroad. She has taught in public education and higher education, working with students of all ages—from young children to aspiring educators. With a strong commitment to community outreach and professional service, Dr. DeWitt continues to shape the future of education through her leadership, teaching, and global perspective.

On a personal note, Dr. DeWitt is passionate about making reading fun and engaging for all learners. She also deeply values working alongside preservice teachers, helping them develop the skills and confidence they need to become effective, compassionate educators themselves.

Kerri Templeton

Kerri Templeton is an Assistant Professor and Clinical Education Coordinator at the State College of Florida. She holds a Master’s degree in Reading Education and is pursuing an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership with plans to graduate this summer, further reinforcing her expertise in literacy instruction and teacher and educational leader development. With 17 years of experience in education, Mrs. Templeton has served as a classroom teacher, school administrator, and statewide educational leader. She is passionate about empowering educators through evidence-based instructional strategies and engaging professional development. Prior to her current role, she served as a school principal and later as a Leadership Development Coordinator for the West Virginia Department of Education, where she played a key role in supporting federally identified schools for improvement. Additionally, she worked as an Early and Elementary Learning Specialist for the state of West Virginia, leading statewide Science of Reading initiatives. Her current research focuses on instructional walkthroughs and self-efficacy, particularly in the context of administrator-led professional learning. Mrs. Templeton actively works to bridge theory and practice, equipping future educators with the skills necessary for success in diverse learning environments.

TRANSCRIPT

Jessica Hurdley:

Please to introduce our faculty from the State College of Florida. I’ll let them introduce themselves and I’m going to turn the time over to you.

Nicholas Catania:

Thank you so much. We are very excited to be here. We’re looking forward to sharing our experience thus far with using GoReact here at State College of Florida. So let’s jump in. I am Dr. Nicholas Catania. I’m an associate professor and the program manager for elementary education here at State College of Florida.

Kristina DeWitt:

Hi, I’m Dr. Kristina DeWitt. I am the department chair for the education programs here at State College of Florida.

Kerri Templeton:

Hi, I am Kerri Templeton. I’m an assistant professor here and also the clinical education coordinator.

Nicholas Catania:

So to give you all a little bit of background about our program and the context of where we are working, we have both an elementary education and exceptional student education bachelor’s program. Both were launched in the fall of 2022 and have been growing since then. We are a two program, so our students, many of which start at State College of Florida in their lower level courses work to complete their AA degree and then have to graduate from that degree to apply to our program to be admitted and approved to be in our two year program. So they have roughly two year experience in their AA program and then a two year experience with us if they come to our program full time. We serve two local school districts, Manatee and Sarasota County, and we currently, although we’re using GoReact to help support our supervision of final interns and our future interns in the field, we do our observations, our formal observations in person with GoReact used to supplement that experience.

So why GoReact in education? So for those of you that are new to GoReact, we’ve had a really positive experience which we’re going to share with you throughout this presentation, but a little bit about why we use GoReact and why GoReact is helpful to us as educators. Preparing future educators in the field. We have this idea of using video feedback in our pre-service teacher education and we know that from our own experience and research shows that video feedback and opportunities for us to watch ourselves back as we teach to reflect on what we can do better and what things we’ve done well can be really beneficial to the teacher’s experience and the teacher’s growth over time. So that piece of the role in which that feedback plays is really, really important to us in pre-service teacher education. We also know that there are benefits for the instructional strategy component of the video feedback feature.

So when we have our students looking for specific instructional strategies to try to identify what those should look like or do look like in their own teaching, and then they’re given feedback from their supervisor or their collaborating teacher that can help to support their growth and their role as teachers as well. That idea of self-reflection where we have our students going through, we’ll talk a little bit more about our process, but watching back those videos and reflecting on their teaching, making claims about what things they saw that they did well, what areas they can continue to improve upon, and it allows to continue that conversation further in a virtual space. And then the idea of peer collaboration and we’ll talk today about how we plan to use that idea of peer collaboration as we continue to grow this pilot that we’ve done with GoReact in our final internship as we expand that into earlier field experiences starting in the fall of this coming year.

In addition, that idea where they get to our pre-service teachers get to analyze their own personal teaching experiences and then explore how maybe that could have looked differently if they were to try something different, whether that be from feedback they get from us as supervisors or the AI component that has recently been integrated in that we’ve been piloting this semester with students that provides them some alternative options or suggestions, recommendations of ways they could improve a specific part of a lesson or a piece, a component of a bigger part of a lesson that they’ve video recorded.

Kerri Templeton:

So since we just started piloting GoReact, we’re going to talk a little bit about what we have found to be our best practices. I come to this work with the perspective of a former classroom teacher, but also a former school principal and now I’ve turned college professor and final intern supervisor. So I can understand that it is super important to have valuable meaningful feedback. Not only that, but the trust is so important as well. So just for context, our final internship, it spans 16 weeks and our candidates are going to be placed in that classroom for 15 weeks. Each candidate is observed in person by us three times and then their cooperating teacher observes them three times as well. So we require that all of their teaching from the supervisor observation to be recorded and it has been wonderful. For instance, it gives us the flexibility, say that we have scheduling conflict or we’re traveling to another school and we miss five to 10 minutes of that observation, or maybe their lesson went extra long past that required time, and we can actually view that video and give specific feedback based on what we might’ve missed due to scheduling.

It also empowers our students to engage in that authentic self-reflection using the recording. So as for the self-reflection in Florida, we follow the Florida educator accomplished practices and we call those the fess. So if you are saying fes, that’s what we mean. The FES define what effective teaching looks like and the standards are going to be embedded throughout our entire preparation program. So to strengthen that self-reflection, we have the candidates upload the video we’ve already observed in person, like I said, and then they tag the moments aligned to the fess using a customized marker set that we already created and put in our library. Within GoReact, the candidate then also has to provide evidence explaining how they demonstrated each feap. Additionally, students then will self-reflect on their lesson plan, what went well, what they changed for next time, but that video feature really allows them to timestamp those specific examples and then they’re also able to connect the reflections to the fess in a much more organic and intentional way.

Kristina DeWitt:

So in looking at the idea of using GoReact for micro-teaching experiences, our pre-service teachers in the field have a predetermined approved lesson before we come out to do the observation, but at times there are blocks of a lesson that are broken into smaller components. For example, ELA is very typically in our area around a 90 minute block and broken into 15, 20 minute blocks of time for different things. So for example, when I visit a student and observe an ELA lesson or a reading lesson and they’re using a formalized program such as Haggerty or uly, which we see frequently in Florida, that component of the lesson is very separate or different from other components of that ELA lesson. One of the things that have benefited us this far in the pilot with microteaching exercises is to look at specifically those smaller chunks of the video where they have different components of the lesson that focus on different areas.

I like to discuss on the ground in the classroom with the student feedback for that micro-teaching before they watch the video. So they’re getting some organic authentic feedback from me immediately following a formal observation. This doesn’t happen every time, as Mrs Templeton said, due to scheduling, but I try to intentionally allow just a few minutes five to 10 minutes afterwards to be able to talk to them or I have the students do their reflective piece and discussion of their micro-teaching on the phone, like maybe at their next planning period that day or at the end of the school day so that we can touch base before they start to go in and do a more formalized self-reflection with the video component. One of the things that I am doing currently in another internship class, which is called the Reading Internship, it’s a pretty large chunk of time over the course of a students are required in Florida to have 60 hours in a classroom and we are going to use GoReact with peer reviews going into the next semester because one of the benefits that the interns are seeing is being able to see other cohorts teach in another classroom that they don’t have the experience for.

So say for example, if I am assigned a first grade classroom, but I also want to see what they’re doing in the upper grades, maybe third grade or fourth grade or even lower in kindergarten, I’m able to watch another peer’s video and learn from it in the lens of a case study and possibly to be able to give feedback to that particular peer if that was the specific requirement of the assignment. We look forward to being able to use GoReact for a deeper peer review and to connect with the self-reflection.

Nicholas Catania:

So how is GoReact enhancing our feedback and our reflective processes? My colleagues here have kind of touched on some of this already a little bit in some of what we’ve talked about, but really with our implementation this semester, as Ms. Templeton mentioned, we’ve really used the final internship course this semester to be our course to test out and make sure that GoReact it does and help support our students and ourselves in the way that we were looking for prior to being at this institution. I did have experience with GoReact at a prior institution, although I was more on the, it was already ready for me and set up and ready and everything was tidy and copied and where it needed to be. So in this pilot that we’re doing this semester, we really got to experience it from starting from the ground up, how to go about integrating it into our coursework, how to go about setting up the markers.

As Ms. Templeton mentioned, the students’ experience how to get them set up and thus far, all of those pieces have been relatively seamless with very minimal technological challenges or issues that we couldn’t hash out or figure out within a few moments. So that has been really great. In addition, we have those markers that are set up and to Dr. DeWitt’s point, we have the FES already aligned in our program and part of our state requirement, but in the reading internship we also have the reading competencies, which are a different set of markers that we have aligned to our GoReact account, which allows now for when Dr. Dewitt is doing something at reading internship, the students can be tagging the reading competencies for an assignment while also practicing those FE connections as well. Because we do those Feap connections throughout all of the students’ coursework, the reading competencies are really catered to the reading internship experience.

So that ability to have multiple markers has been really helpful. In addition, the idea of having a, prior to using GoReact this semester in the fall semester of last year’s final internship, there wasn’t that emphasis on watching the video or proof of watching the video other than a typed written reflection after they watched their video. So they would film their video, submit it to me via a link in OneDrive or Google Drive through Canvas. I could have access and watch it, but there was that missing piece where we got to see the connections of what they were thinking in the actual moment as they were watching the video back, which GoReact has now filled that void. In addition to us having them do the watch back the video and do the markers, they also have a written component where they’re now typing out what were the biggest ahas from that coding experience and that data piece where they’re analyzing their codes and their markers within that video to say, okay, I used THI two B several times and that was something I really did well.

Whereas thi four A or something within assessment was something that I missed with the summative assessment at the end. So they’re able to make those connections between their practice and the standards or the indicators that we’ve aligned to the program. Additionally, now we have the option using GoReact of real time feedback and asynchronous feedback. So we’re going to talk here in a moment about the AI pilot and how that helps with that. But just as we’ve said, a student can maybe start a lesson and we are there to see it live for the first 30 to 45 minutes in person and then we have to head out to another classroom or head to another school. So we might not catch the tail end of that lesson. I now have the ability to go in and give not only that real-time feedback that I’ve given while I was sitting in that classroom, but I can also give that asynchronous feedback as I watch that video back for that 10 minute segment to provide additional feedback there, which has been a really big help as we’ve used GoReact in our teaching.

Kristina DeWitt:

So for the faculty and peer engagement and feedback, I think that GoReact has just really amplified what we can do with our interns and what they can make sense of based on how we have tagged and coded different things. I am somebody who is very old school, new school, I like that they still can view something and then write a reflection, but I also am so intrigued by the AI features that Ms. Templeton’s going to talk about here in a second because I believe that before we started using GoReact, the intern thinks they’re saying what they’re supposed to say and making sense of what they think they’re supposed to, but when they are able to go back and watch it through this program, tag it with these markers, they now can prove to themselves that I do know what I thought I know, and they can do that multiple times.

Crossing over to being able to do that with peers, being able to watch a peers video and find these markers as well helps in that collaborative process. As we know, we’re not on the ground in the school by ourself. There are other teachers on our grade level team, our subject team or discipline team, and that really has helped them to make sense of that. It also with our cooperating teachers, that classroom teacher where they’re in their classroom, I’ve had a couple of experiences where that CT is what we call them, watched the video with the intern to say, okay, so watch get ready. You’re going to see you did something positive or something that’s a grow that we need to work on. Okay, watch again, watch it again. Okay, now let’s put those together. So if they didn’t have this component with GoReact and recording this video, that teacher, that CT on the ground wouldn’t be able to do that. They could share, I observed you do this. It appears that you did this well again five minutes later or that you missed the mark on such and such. Now they’re able to actually have something to follow with the data collection that they can see and then they can make sense of it.

Kerri Templeton:

So back in February, I think we received an email that we were going to be able to have a free trial of the AI feedback feature. We were super excited. I was so excited. I immediately emailed Dr. Dewitt, Dr. Catan. We thought, oh my goodness, we can use this as an opportunity to see how we can give that more targeted and intentional feedback to enhance our own feedback that we’re giving. So what we did for the final supervisor observation, which was just two last week, two weeks ago, we decided to toggle that AI feature off at first, and we did that intentionally. We tried to, what we thought was we wanted students to complete their self-reflection and their post-conference with us without that ai, not sure if that’s good or bad, not saying either way, but after those steps, we decided to toggle that AI feature back on. In that post-conference we did describe to the students, this is meant to enhance our feedback, and what we decided to do was give the students two sets of the AI markers. So they received four indicators with additional feedback. So we’re planning to continue this process and purchase that for the fall and spring semesters next year and just refine our practices as we learn more.

Nicholas Catania:

And I think one of the things that I was thinking about on my drive into work this week about this AI feature is the idea of possibly being intentional. There’s so many options and from what I hear word on the street is that there’s going to be even more coming. And I think it could be really interesting to be intentional in certain, almost having a focus for the observation cycle to say, in this cycle your AI feature feedback is going to be centered around feedback and your ability to give feedback, and we be more intentional in that process. And I love that there’s that menu of options that you can check from to say, okay, we can differentiate now from one observation to the next or from one student to the next, what could potentially even be something that we could explore as we learn more about it. But it’s been a very interesting and seamless transition using that AI feature for sure.

Kerri Templeton:

We’re going to talk a little bit about the student and faculty feedback on our pilot year. As far as experiences from pre-service teachers, it’s really gone surprisingly smoothly. Early on in the semester we had students practice just getting used to the platform by uploading a video from their reading internship actually, and then tagging FES just to get them used to and accustomed to the product itself. And so also to support the students, we too created a how-to guide. We posted it in our learning management system that we use, which is Canvas, and we also posted a document that had troubleshooting tips that students could go to and see, which I know GoReact has an amazing website as well with all of those tips. So while we’ve had a few minor hiccups, overall the transition has been really, really manageable for our students.

Kristina DeWitt:

So I am the faculty that was the third person to come on board to learn how to use GoReact. And I have to say that it was a seamless transition from Dr. Gatan and Mrs. Templeton that were trained initially and included the markers initially. It has been an easy transition for me to go in and make sense of what I’m looking at. I think in exploring this, if you’re planning to consider or use this moving forward, you want to look at your faculty and say, how can this be launched so that it doesn’t burden any instructors that are already going out in the field, whether in our case at our institution, we physically go to schools. I know some institutions do all of this virtually and through the video or live through the video so that it doesn’t feel like it’s an extra something.

I also enjoy the opportunity on the screen where the videos are once they’ve submitted their videos, that I can go back and look at different things and I can do a compare and contrast when I’m going to teach a next live section or a seminar. We do seminars with our final interns every week, look at some commonalities or some places that we need to grow in bigger picture. I saw this a couple of times. The one insight that I have for some less tech savvy students that are, I have one that’s still struggling on how to use GoReact, and I think we’ve determined Mrs. Templeton and I determined that it’s most likely a lower broadband connection that they’re using in a concrete building, a K school that they’re not able to upload some things and if they just went home or somewhere else that they uploaded that they would have better luck. But you’re always going to have some little things that pop up when you’re piloting something new. But 99% of the process so far being the brand new newbie to this has been a very valuable experience and definitely enhances the way that I work with final interns.

Nicholas Catania:

And I think that day where we spent, when we planned for a seminar, we thought we were going to need a good 30 minutes to have the students go in and practice getting things set up and getting their login and doing all the things and is Canvas going to talk nicely to GoReact on the backend with whatever the coding stuff does that’s not in my area of expertise. And we got to the activity and it was like, I’m not maybe five minutes by five minutes, every one of our final interns, I think there’s 14 of them, were all set up. They had everything was ready to go. The one student that got done first was able to troubleshoot to help the other ones. It was such a quick and easy integration, which was so great. And then also thinking about since then, I know for me personally, I’ve experienced less tech issues being able to access students’ videos because in the past they would have to send it through a Google Drive and sometimes the Google Drive, I didn’t have access to that link and I’d go in a day later and I’d go to watch it and it’d say, access denied, and then it would take time for me to email the student.

And it is now. It takes all of that time consuming, those time consuming silly things away and allows me to use that time more efficiently to give that feedback and spend more quality time with that student and providing them the support they need. And then the other piece, having it be in GoReact, the confidentiality of it all, being able to have it housed in GoReact and know that it’s in a place that’s safe from public view. Because in the old days students would say, well, can I just post it to YouTube? And we’d have to go over why that can’t be on a public access in YouTube, but anybody can see. So we’ve had that as well. And then in thinking about the faculty experience and how it relates to the impact of this on our learning outcomes, there’s also been a lot of conversation and networking within the GoReact community.

Recently there was a Florida meetup, if you will, virtual meeting of all the Florida people using GoReact in higher ed, and although I wasn’t there live, Ms. Templeton was there live, I watched it back afterwards. I found it to be so first off energizing and exciting that there were all these other people that are doing similar things, but also it’s creating that virtual network of other faculty around our area and within our state that we can now lean on to say, Hey, what cool things are you doing? What have you tried that’s not working? What have you tried that’s really working well? And I think that that all leads to a positive impact on learning outcomes because it’s pushing us to be more innovative. It’s us leaning into ai, which we all know is not going away. So we are really trying to walk the walk and talk the talk for our students as we think about how we can integrate technology to make our jobs more efficient, not replace us, but just make it more supported.

Kristina DeWitt:

So of course with any pilot or new process, there come challenges and how are we going to overcome these challenges and rethink where we are. Accessibility considerations. I shared previously that we have discovered that there are some locations that the student cannot upload videos or that they’re using hardware that’s much older, and so we are going to make sure on the front end of the next semester that we let them know what the recommended requirements are and our institution actually has laptops to share with students. I don’t know if that’s common with everybody. Funding, of course, things cost money, and so you have to propose why this is important. It took us a little while to convince, but we’re a smaller institution with a new education department around two years. But going to that statewide event with other users of GoReact is a way to be able to validate for us with our leadership at State College of Florida, the importance of this. Initially we shared why it was important. Dr. Katani shared his past experience, but then collaborating with all the other people in our state and being able to show success in how student learning outcomes have been met and the ease for both the instructor and the intern and why that’s really important for that overall benefit of the student experience.

Nicholas Catania:

As far as integrating GoReact into existing curriculum, I think we kind of touched on this already, the ease of integration was pretty seamless. I know as we think about expanding into the fall semester into further other coursework, one of the things that’s really nice about GoReact is you have that library that Ms. Templeton mentioned. So once we have our markers set in the library for State College of Florida and we have the assignments set as far as supervisor observation number one for example, and it’s already all set up as sort of a template. I kind of compare it to having a master shell in Canvas for your course that you then copy into your live section. It’s very similar to that experience from the user’s perspective. So we now know that we can easily copy from one section of final internship into another. It’s not something where you have to recreate it every time. So that’s exciting. The integration of having rubrics in there is also really great because when we score it in GoReact, the best part is is that the score talks to Canvas and loads into Canvas as well. So it’s saving time and energy there as well and it has it all in one place, and that has been a really seamless process for us thus far.

Kerri Templeton:

So as far as fostering a feedback rich environment, we’ve talked a lot about this already, but we know that research shows feedback is targeted, it has to communicate progress. It’s timely gives students that opportunity to practice and implement what they’ve learned. So we’ve been really intentional about how and when we have provided feedback to our final interns, we avoid what I call the spray and pray approach where you just offer all the feedback at once and then hope something sticks instead. We have really tried to give that purposeful feedback that’s tailored and differentiated to the needs of our individual students. So the AI markers and Fess tagging ability and then I guess the reading competency tagging ability and GoReact, that’s been super helpful in supporting this. It has helped us reinforce points with the AI feedback or even IT highlights areas for growth that maybe we can build upon in that next observation cycle. It has really just helped us create that feedback process that’s not only effective, but it’s been sustainable I feel like, and also growth focused.

Nicholas Catania:

And I think it makes our students more receptive to feedback now too because they’re having so much experience with it that it’s not such a scary thing that we’re able to say, here’s a goal as teachers, we’re working to make ourselves better for the next time. So we’ve provided you some actionable feedback here and now we want to see you try and use it and implement it in the next cycle, which I think has been a big help for our students as well. So next

Kristina DeWitt:

Step, it’s really shown confidence when you go and visit them for an observation like how it increases our confidence because they are able to make decisions, their own data decisions based on their tags that they’ve done and GoReact and how they can see initially just like on a call like this, on a webinar like this, seeing ourselves is always awkward at first, but getting past that and what you can take away from that, what can I take away from that?

Nicholas Catania:

Absolutely. So next steps for us, some of the things we’ve kind of touched on already, obviously we’re going to continue to think about creative ways to make sure we have funding for this because we know that it is a cost, but it is such a worthy cost and a worthwhile cost as far as we’re concerned from our perspective and from the user experience. So we really think that we are going to continue to find ways to make sure that we can have that funding available to make sure we have these licenses available for students. We’re going to lean into that AI pilot that we’ve started this semester and really think throughout the summer how can we lean further into it and incorporate it further in the fall semester. We know AI is not going away as far as aligning with program learning outcomes as we wind down at the end of this semester.

One of the cool things about GoReact is also the reports that we have only just scratched the surface on. I know Ms. Templeton recently shared in a planning meeting, she’s gotten to see a little bit from trainings of all the cool things that GoReact does for as far as data goes. And so we’re excited to see what we can do with that data to help support and show that what we are doing is supportive of our students and our program is supportive of our students as they’re working and taking on that step into going into their own classrooms,

Kristina DeWitt:

Which directly connects to measuring effectiveness of GoReact, being able to look at those data reports and being able to make decisions going into the next semester with the next group of interns. The ease of being able to use this in the courses has already shown effectiveness across the board. Everybody is in agreement that the ease of use and the availability of resources and being able to ask questions quickly and effectively has already been shown in the pilot.

Kerri Templeton:

And as far as looking ahead too, we’re also going to be expanding into the reading internship. We were going to do that this fall actually, but the hurricanes got in the way here, so we’re going to do that in the fall. And then Dr. Catia and I are going to keep providing that ongoing training and sharing that how to guide with any faculty using GoReact within their courses and of course answering any questions. We’re also looking to, as we said, embed that peer review and just keeping intentional with the data, with the continuous improvement. So we’re going to keep learning from our colleagues at other institutions through attending any professional learning opportunities. And then really important is to gather that feedback, that ongoing feedback from our teaching candidates. So our goal is really just to continue evolving our implementation of GoReact here in a way that’s both meaningful and sustainable.

Nicholas Catania:

And I think with that we are, we’ve got a few minutes left to answer any questions.

Jessica Hurdley:

Awesome. Thank you all so much for your insight. There are a few questions in our q and a. If you are in attendance, if you joined a little bit late or if you didn’t have a chance to put a question in the q and a, you can either put it in the q and a or the chat, whatever’s easiest for you. We’ll get to all the questions here as well. One person asked, one worry I have now how can I use GoReact with faculty and in-school teachers without them seeing this as an unnecessary work add-on? Right now, no one at our teacher ed program uses GoReact

Kristina DeWitt:

Definitely is not an add-on. It will make your life easier once you go through the training. So Mrs. Templeton and Dr. Kaney did the initial training. Remember I shared earlier if you were here then I’m still old school, new school. I love new school stuff. I knew AI is changing the way I’m doing things, but I’m still a notebook person, highlighter person, color coded person. I mix the two and I know a lot of teachers still do that. At no time did I feel like it was not necessary and just finishing our pilot in the first semester, it is evident that this makes it easier for me and my communication and feedback with my interns.

Kerri Templeton:

And I think too, approaching it as you talk about the implementation of GoReact and all of the opportunities it offers, taking what you’ve learned maybe from us or from other institutions that have implemented it and seeing all of the benefits. I mean, just hearing what Dr. Dewitt says, it definitely the benefits are outweighing any of those negative add-on steps and it really is seamless. That integration, once you get that initial training done, it is just continuous improvement from that point forward

Kristina DeWitt:

And taking at a time. Yeah, we did not have that success with other programs that we used and when we launched this department we did not. Dr. Catan and I did not have that experience at all. This has been seamless and I apologize for speaking over you.

Nicholas Catania:

Oh, you’re fine, you’re fine. I think because I had past experience with GoReact, we probably jumped into it a lot quicker than maybe if we were all brand new to it. So I also think give yourself the permission to take it on a little bit at a time and use it purposefully and strategically to support teachers in a way that’s not going to seem, oh my gosh, I have to do all these things. But if it’s you’re just going to upload your video and watch it back for reflective purposes at first, and then you eventually kind of add on the layers, which there are several layers that really allow that differentiated experience for the user, I think that that is also another perspective to come at this idea with.

Jessica Hurdley:

Awesome, great response. How many markers do you usually use? Is there an ideal number that you have found work? Well,

Nicholas Catania:

Ms. Templeton, many, many. We have. How many reading competencies are there? Dr. Dewitt

Kristina DeWitt:

5, 9, 9 reading indicators that we use.

Kerri Templeton:

And then as far as the FES go, there’s a bunch because each, so there’s fes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 that we use, but in each of those numbers, there’s also the indicator. So it’s one A, one B, one C, but our students at that point are very familiar with the fes. They also have a document that outlines all of the fess as well. And so that itself has been seamless for our interns, but we do use a lot.

Nicholas Catania:

And I also think it depends on the students. So last week’s observations, if a student’s video was 45 minutes, maybe some of them put 15 different places where they marked things. What I’m looking for when I go back and review their markers is that they’ve done consistency across the full video that shows me that it’s proof that they watched the whole video, but also if there’s a spot where they did a lot, then I might go back into Dr. DeWitt’s point earlier, rewatch that section to say, what’s going on in this part? Or from my notes, I know at 3 42, 3 minutes in there was something wonky that happened. Let me go in and put some markers there so we can talk about it in that. So I think it’s again, kind of getting comfortable and familiar and in some cases I had to tell after the first one, Hey, you put 50 something markers in here that’s way too many and you’re doing too much work, you need to back it up so we can be more purposeful in that work that you’re doing.

Kristina DeWitt:

And you could decide as you roll this out, what it is that you wanted to have them focus on. I mean, if classroom management is like a go-to first thing or content that me doing reading curriculum that they are doing science of reading and they’re articulating and pronouncing and doing word families and all of that correctly, then maybe there’s something specific that you want to focus on for that rotation of the observation. In Florida, we just have a lot of indicators for our dispositions that come down from the Department of Education, but our students learn that from day one in the program, and so they’re familiar with that.

Jessica Hurdley:

As a follow-up question, when you use a lot of markers, doesn’t this make it challenging to add feedback to a particular session?

Nicholas Catania:

I don’t find that to be a challenge. I think no,

Kristina DeWitt:

Because I chunk ’em. I chunk ’em together on just like Dr. Cat was sharing about watching just that one little three minute segment or something of the video and why there were so there. I think sometimes you have those students that go above and beyond and they’re kind of going down the wrong rabbit hole above and beyond of why they’re doing that. And that’s just a conversation with them on the purpose of what it is we’re trying to collect and what they’re to learn from because they’re still doing written reflections and journaling and that type of thing when they’re in their internship. And so it is really that connection. I’m huge on chunking things together. I want to know that you are seeing this in a 45 lesson or however long it is. You’re seeing this consistently or not consistently and being able to talk about either or of those.

Nicholas Catania:

And I think if I remember, if I could pull up the, I would pull up my GoReact screen right now to triple check, but I think in putting the GoReact markers in, although there’s six FES plus all the subindicators, we focused on FES two and three because FES two and three in the Florida accomplished practices are about the learning environment and your instruction or your delivery of instruction. So Feap one lesson planning isn’t really something in the observation itself that we felt is a huge focus. So I don’t even know if Feap one is even loaded in there. Ms. Templeton, do you remember?

Kerri Templeton:

I don’t think it is. I think I misspoke. I think we did decide. We initially did one through five. We decided intentionally two and three to have students tag just two and three because we would see those other feats through other indicators.

Nicholas Catania:

Correct. Think we see their draft of their lesson plan before they teach it. So we’ve already checked feap one. We then can talk about FEAP four, which is assessment in the post-conference, and they have to submit other anecdotal notes and student samples in their lesson. So there’s other pieces that get touched on. So fess two and three, back to that question about being a lot, if we focus just on fess two and three in the video portion, we’re hitting on the other FES in these other aspects of that observation cycle.

Kristina DeWitt:

And as we roll into the next semester with the reading indicators, it’s really important for them to know what reading skills that they’re teaching. I mean, there is some newbies are still not familiar with what’s the difference between an activity that’s a phonological activity and a phonics activity. And so being able to tag those, what they are, and if they’re incorrect, then we talk about why you thought that and how to fix that gap. And so I think it’s very beneficial that they learn that as they’re going through the process of being a pre-service teacher before they’re in their own classroom.

Jessica Hurdley:

Perfect. Now Nicholas, I know you had said that there’s other indicators that you request for the other fess, so they’re required to provide their list and they’re required to provide evidence of that assessment. This question kind of talks to that there’s someone that’s piloting and currently the faculty are using GoReact with students. Do you find it helpful to have the students attach their lesson plan with the recordings? Do you have them do that currently and is that something that you’re looking at exploring?

Nicholas Catania:

We don’t currently have them do that in Canvas. The way we have it set up is there’s the lesson plan part of the assignment. So that’s one portion of points with one rubric that has specific details and criteria, and so they’ll already have gotten that feedback. We require that they turn in their draft to us 48 hours before we come and see them live so that we can at least have eyes and give them some additional feedback knowing that their CT would’ve already been a part of that co-planning lesson to begin with. So there’s that piece then our piece of feedback 48 hours before, and then that is its own separate thing and GoReact and the reflection or another portion of the assignment in a different assignment altogether. So we keep them separate. I could see it, I guess, being beneficial if you were wanting to do a side-by-side, but for our process, I don’t think it would be anything that would benefit me to change that for me.

Kristina DeWitt:

And we physically go out and observe them with these formalized lesson plans that they do what we call a scripted lesson that they write. I can see a benefit if you’re using GoReact as your observation, and you would need to have that side by side to be able to see it. At the same time we see it ahead of time. Again, I’m the old school, new school, I have them print me one out so that I have it sitting right there on my lap when I’m there. That will never change for me. It’s too many years of how I’ve done that. You can’t change that. I love the ai, but I still have to have that paper copy of that lesson plan sitting there with me. Awesome.

Jessica Hurdley:

Awesome. Thank you so much for answering our questions and sharing your impact that the integration of GoReact has really made in your programs some practical strategies that everyone here today can incorporate into their programs and really the secret sauce to improve the quality of teacher preparation programs and ultimately to impact and benefit PK 12 learners.

Nicholas Catania:

Thank you so much.

Jessica Hurdley:

That wraps up.