Teacher Education

Taking Coaching & Feedback to the Next Level With GoReact

A short video clip describing how GoReact helps to maximize teacher training with self-reflection and peer feedback

Hear how faculty from East Tennessee State University provide timely and frequent feedback to teacher candidates.

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Jessica Hurdley:

How are you using GoReact?

Angela Shelton:

I’ll start with this one. Last year was our first year implementing GoReact and I jumped all in. And so I was fortunate enough to be able to do this with all of my early childhood teacher candidates from the lens of a supervisor as well as a course instructor. And so I got to kind of see how that works both ways. And so from an instructor’s standpoint, I don’t always get out into the field to see them teaching a writing lesson or a math lesson or just to be able to focus on classroom management. When I go out to supervise, I’m watching a lesson. There’s so many things that we have to do in the course of that time that using GoReact as an instructor, I could really hone in on just a specific area of focus. And I think Megan alluded to that when she talked about more frequent check-ins and really being able to provide specific feedback.

So that really is the first way that I used it. And then I ran into our GoReact friends at a conference and completely made a nuisance of myself and said, Hey, I want to do this, but I’m not sure how. And so I think his name is Sam. Sam was excellent. He pulled up his computer right there at the conference and said, this is how you do it. And so from that point on, I was really able to utilize even more of the technology available through GoReact. I was able to select videos from outside sources and upload them and we could all watch them and have a conversation in the chat function and we could see each other’s comments that are timestamped. Loved that. So we could all highlight things we were seeing on whatever topic we were focusing on. And then I also have the pleasure in our university of helping our candidates successfully pass their edTPA portfolio assessment that is a licensure requirement in our state, and the candidates were able to upload small clips and watch each other’s clips and give each other feedback. And that was a part of the, sorry, my kids back. That was part of the program that I didn’t really think about prior to talking with Sam. But being able to have them watch each other’s video using specific rubrics, highlighting, oh, this is an exact example of respect and rapport was so beneficial to them, and really took that level of coaching and feedback to even higher level than previously.

Jessica Hurdley:

You’ll never make yourself a nuisance by reaching out to us with that. We’re always happy to help as well. I’m glad you did reach out to Sam at that conference too. Megan, anything you want to add there?

Megan Krupa:

I would just echo what Angela said about the reflection piece. So from the instructor perspective, as I’m not supervising in the field this semester, part of our course requirement is that students will reflect on an instructed video that they filmed and GoReact. So I tell them all the time, you’ve got somebody coming in watching you, maybe they’re doing it virtually, but you’ve got to learn about yourself and you have to learn all those annoying little ticks that you have as a teacher. How fast do you talk? How much do you talk with your hands? What are those students really saying when you’ve got your back turned or you’re working with a group? And I think it helps reinforce that skillset of listening and we’ve had conversations. They’ve come back and said, oh, I heard this comment between these two students and I need to address it now. I’m not sure how to do that. So bringing to light some of those hidden elements of the classroom I think is very for them as well as it can provide the supervisor some additional time to reflect and really narrow in on what they’re saying.

Jessica Hurdley:

That is awesome. It’s great to kind of flip the roles too at first so that they’re able to watch a video and assess that video and watch that before creating their own it familiarizes themselves, your candidates with the tool, but also kind of brings down a little bit of their anxiety as far as recording themselves and watching themselves.