Transforming Teacher Coaching: Insights from Riverside County Office of Education

Sam Farley:

Hey, hello everybody and welcome to our webinar today. We’re thrilled you’ve joined us and hope that you enjoy the presentation and walk away prepared to inspire your teachers and make a positive impact on their careers. My name’s Sam Farley. I’m with the GoReact team and we’re hosting today’s presentation. For those of you not familiar with GoReact and why this topic is so important to us, GoReact is a video feedback solution that has taken our 10 years of experience in helping higher ed institutions with student skill development and now jumped headfirst to helping school districts support teacher growth with that same technology.

First, before we get started, a few points of housekeeping. Today’s event’s going to last about 45 minutes, that includes about 30 minutes of presentation with enough time, about 10 to 15 minutes for some Q&A at the end, we are recording today’s presentation, so if you need to hop off before we finish or you want to share that recording with a colleague, we will be emailing that out afterwards.

We do want today’s presentation to be as interactive as possible, so throughout the presentation, think about any questions you have for our speakers and then you can take those questions, put them into our Q&A function. So to submit those questions, use that Q&A function, and then we’ll try and get all those questions answered before the end of the webinar today. You also see a chat function, so please use that chat function to introduce yourselves to each other who are on the webinar today, tell us what school you’re with, and if you have any links of relevant resources to share with other attendees, please use that chat section to share any additional resources. If you have any technical difficulties, I do have members of my team monitoring that chat and they’ll be able to help you as well. Use that chat to communicate any technical difficulties as well.

I’m so happy today to be joined by not only two colleagues of ours at GoReact, but I would say friends of mine, Jaymie Baiza, who’s the administrator of Induction and Angel Van Horn, the administrator of online induction, both with Riverside County Office of Education. Let’s have our presenters go ahead and introduce themselves first. Jamie, I’ll have you start and then Angel, I’ll have you follow up after that. Jamie, introduce yourself.

Jaymie Baiza:

Hi, my name is Jaymie Baiza and I am one of the online administrators here with the Riverside County Office of Education Center for Teacher Innovation, new Teacher Induction Program. That’s such a mouthful, but so excited to be here and to share some of the great things that we do in our induction program.

Sam Farley:

Excellent. And Angel?

Angel Van Horn:

Ditto, my name is Angel Van Horn and I am an online administrator with the Riverside County Office of Ed as part of the Center for Teacher Innovation, and we’ve been using GoReact for, I want to say probably the last 10, 11 years in our online program. So excited to be here today to share what we know.

Sam Farley:

Outstanding, outstanding, and as I mentioned, these are two great colleagues and friends. I’ve worked with them pretty much their whole time that we’ve been working together with the Riverside County Office of Education, so I’ve seen their program grow quite a bit and excited for them to be able to share with you a little bit more about how video and video coaching has really helped their teachers in their program.

Angel Van Horn:

But we’ll keep our conference fund to another time. Right?

Sam Farley:

There we go. There we go. Yes. If you have not yet been to the California Induction Conference, it’s a lot of fun, a lot of fun.

Angel Van Horn:

Or go seek out GoReact table because Sam’s a lot of fun. If you’re at a conference and you see them there, stop by and say “Hi.”

Sam Farley:

Oh, and I didn’t even pay her to say that. Thank you guys for that. Well, today’s session, I’m going to ask several questions just to lead our discussion, but both Angel and Jaymie are the subject matter experts here, so I’m going to let them share their experience. Again, please remember, if you have questions, go ahead and submit those questions and we’ll make sure to get to those at the end. Let’s start, Angela, if you can actually help us start, tell us a little bit more about your induction program there at Riverside County Office of Education, and maybe in some ways how it differs from other induction programs that are across the country. Please.

Angel Van Horn:

Okay. Yeah, thanks for reminding me it’s kind of a national audience. Well, Riverside County Office of Education has been in the new teacher clearing credential business for the last 25, 30 years since induction used to be BTSA, Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment in California. It has so improved over to just induction, but Riverside County has always been a player at that table. We are actually the largest induction program in the state of California. We do have over 3,300 candidates and about 1,900 coaches that we support. We support over 250-ish agencies. We add new agencies every year. However, our goal really isn’t to have more agencies. Our goal really is to provide support of induction support to new teachers where induction isn’t already being provided. So because we are a large program, we are able to get to those smaller agencies who don’t have induction offered to their teachers because of their size or because maybe they’re in a rural area, which is going to come back around to GoReact and video later.

But really being able to also go global, which I’ll talk about later too with the video, but that’s really one of the things that make us stand out. Just for induction definition in the state of California, induction is the pathway for a candidate, a teacher candidate to clear their preliminary credential. It’s intended to be in the first two years of their teaching. So it’s really getting that mentor support straight from the beginning. Then they have a mentor that meets an hour a week for the entire program year, and it’s typically a two-year program.

A teacher gets two years of coaching support weekly with a mentor or what we call them reflective coaches, which Jaymie will get into a little bit later. But that’s what our induction program is. Induction really is the purpose of three things, like I said, clearing their credential, but also retaining teachers in the profession, so giving them that support that they have and job satisfaction and keeping them in teacher retention and then of course improving their teaching practice and that which will then hopefully elevate student achievement. That’s what induction is as far as California goes, and that’s who we are at the Center for Teacher Innovation.

Sam Farley:

Excellent. Excellent. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, I mean, while every state has different requirements for induction, in California you guys have that two year program and it’s been great. I’ve worked with a lot of other districts in the area and Riverside is definitely looked at as the pedestal of what we want to accomplish and definitely held up there high in the state. Great job for what you guys have done.

Jaymie, can you tell us a little bit more about your actual coaching and what you guys do because you have a unique situation, I think, than some others where you guys really focus on not just the candidates, but the coaches really preparing the coaches for helping the candidate stuff. Tell us a little bit more about your coaching.

Jaymie Baiza:

Yeah, thank you. As Angel mentioned, we intentionally call our coaches reflective coaches because they help guide the candidate’s thinking on self-reflection and growth. We really want to help our candidates create that habit of mind of continuous improvement. To help our coaches with that, we’ve developed, we’re so proud of this, it’s our Coach Compass. We developed the Coach Compass, which is pretty much a handbook for our coaches on how to support their candidate. There are guiding reflective questions in there to help facilitate the conversation through in the inquiry process through just in time support. Lots of resources there. We have a training dedicated just on the Coach Compass and how to support the candidate that way. Then we also support our coaches by a session called Coach Connections, and it’s an opportunity for our coaches to network with other coaches up and down California and then also engage in a focused skill. We do focus on three skills, listening, questioning, and targeted feedback. Depending on that particular topic, that’s where our coaches will engage in self-reflection and peer feedback using GoReact, which we’ll share in a little bit of what that might look like.

Sam Farley:

Outstanding. Yeah, you guys have a unique situation because you’re literally supporting people across the state, which from bottom to top is probably a 12 to 15 hour drive, so I’m sure there’s some challenges that come with supporting so many candidates and coaches across the state. Angel, I’m curious, I know you guys came to GoReact a number of years ago because of this challenge. What are some of the biggest benefits you’ve observed in using GoReact for your online program?

Angel Van Horn:

Okay, well, I’m going to take it one step back first. The benefits of using video first, because really the video really enables us to be able to have a teacher coach, a reflective coach, join a teacher’s classroom. One of my favorite examples of that is when I had a teacher who was in Honduras, I was able to, through her iPad, really be able to join her classroom for her observations. She also was able to take her iPad, take me outside. We went on a walk around her neighborhood. I was able to see really the environment that she was living in. And so different the culture shock different from here and soldiers on the corners and just the different, we think what a classroom should look like and what it looks like in different countries. So the video really was a game changer for us and really was a turning point in being able to have online mentors.

I do remember going directly to the boss saying, “Hey, I think we need to do this induction program saying online. I think we could really do that.” We had great conversation around it and part of the thinking was, hey, people can actually meet and get married online. I think we could definitely do some mentorship online. That really was the game changer. That was about 11 years ago that we started our online program. Having video made a big difference. Then we started looking at, okay, now that we’re using video and of course having the internet and some of the limitations there, if Jaymie and I, if she’s my coach and I’m her candidate, I can’t really send my recording of 20 minutes, 30 minutes of recording my classroom to her because the size limit would be too large for the videos. Even the whole YouTube uploading things. We still do have teachers upload to video to YouTube because you can post a YouTube link to GoReact.

One of the easiest things became really just having them either do an MP4 video file or just recording directly in GoReact. We started using GoReact with our online coaches for that purpose so that they could easily observe their candidate in their classroom doing their teaching lessons. Then I’ll get into more details later about using GoReact and specific what that looks like as far as the improvements we’ve been able to make over the years as far as using markers and texts and all kinds of ways to give feedback. But it really started with using video and then went from there.

Sam Farley:

Yeah, outstanding. Your journey is very similar to mine. I’ve been a higher ed professor for about 15 years, and while using video was not a new concept, I used it back when you had to check the camcorder out of the library. It wasn’t until I found GoReact as a professor that I realized what I was missing in video plus something. I know that was definitely a game changer for your program and being able to offer video plus more, which really, Jaymie, this leads me to the next question is can you share how you use video in your coaching program? I know you guys use GoReact as the platform for that. I’m sure people are very curious as to how that really helps you with your coaches. If you can share that, that’d be great.

Jaymie Baiza:

Yeah, I’d love to. Let me share my screen here with you to kind of highlight how we use GoReact in induction as we support our coaches. One of the ways that we do this is providing our coaches to self-reflect on their video. Now, Angel mentioned how important it is to use video and really being able to reflect on your own practice. You see yourself in a different lens or in a different light. You’ll notice some of maybe you’re using ums too much when you’re talking with your candidate or maybe you notice that the conversation isn’t candidate driven, but more the coach is talking during the whole hour. Coaches won’t be able to see that unless they see that for themselves in video. We do do a self-reflection video.

To do this, we ask our coaches to record one of their coaching conversations with their candidate and watch that entire video, entire hour, it’s about an hour video and select a five to seven minute clip that really highlights that coaching skill that we went over during one of our coach sessions. For this particular activity, it was targeted feedback. Then we asked them to upload that clip into GoReact, and then self-reflect and use the markers in GoReact to identify the specific skills that we are looking for when you are providing feedback to your candidate. I believe Angel has a couple examples of what that looks like when coaches are using these markers in GoReact.

Angel Van Horn:

All right, Jaymie, if you stop sharing, I can do that. There you go. Okay, let me share that. I’ll talk to this really quickly. I’ll make our video. This is our coach and our candidate, and you can see that they are having conversation there, but this is a recorded conversation that this coach created five to seven minutes and then they were able to go in and the coach themselves can go in and self-reflect, like Jaymie said, use the markers, drop them in. But then also we could also use the same video for peer feedback, which we do self-reflection in the fall. They can get used to the tool, learn how to, oops, sorry, learn how to use it. Then in the spring we partner them up and pair them up. This is what that looks like here and I really liked that with the markers, you can make them whatever you want them.

Our particular training was on targeted feedback and the three skills that we were looking at with is your feedback contextual, is there an actionable improvement at the end of it and is it evidence-based? We were able to make those markers and then define them so that it was the same. Then as you can see, we can go through and drop them. I also want to show you the graph real quick because I love this part where you can see where feedback was given during the entire video session here and then also how many markers were dropped. That’s really a good overall overview for the candidate and for us as CTI staff to see how our coaches are doing. Anything you want to add to that one, Jaymie?

Jaymie Baiza:

I do. If you stop sharing real quick, I can share the slide again. I do want to add here. Thank you. As Angel mentioned, not only do coaches do self-reflection, and that is we intentionally have our coaches do that in the fall for many reasons. One, it really is to self-reflect on their own practice, but also get familiar as Angel mentioned with the markers that are in GoReact because then in the spring we ask them to provide peer feedback with their candidate or excuse me, with their coaches. Not only are they getting feedback with their self feedback, but they’re also getting feedback from their peers. To do this, we match, so during our synchronous session of our trainings, we ask our coaches, we put them out in breakout rooms and pair them up, they exchange information and then they upload a new video of a coaching conversation and they share that upload link directly with their coach, with their partner. That was a new feature that we really enjoyed having because was launched I believe last year, was that ability to use that share feature with other coaches.

We were having some, not hiccups, but some planning issues with trying to figure out how do we share 1800 videos with each other, with pairs. GoReact was very responsive in trying to find a solution to really help what we need for our coaches to share their videos privately and being able to receive that feedback. Then-

Angel Van Horn:

Can I jump in real quick, Jaymie, real quick?

Jaymie Baiza:

Yeah, of course.

Angel Van Horn:

Because I think that’s a really huge point for everyone else out there is that privacy piece. We could have just said send them the YouTube video, but teachers are very apprehensive about putting their observations or classroom conversations with their candidates that are private and confidential in a YouTube type platform. But I love that I’m able to really affirm or confirm with my candidates like, “Hey coaches, make sure you tell them you’re the only one that can see this.” Even though this course that we have, this folder that I showed you, it has 1800 people that are going to be uploading a video, only the person who uploads the video and anyone they share it with, so on the actual link there for the video, you can click the little share icon and I can share it with one private person.

Everybody else, they can’t even see your video, they can’t see. Sometimes I even get people saying like, “Am I in the right course? There’s nobody else here.” Oh yeah, there’s 1700. Keep going. Because what is there is private. Not only the video can’t be seen, but neither can the feedback. And so I think that’s really important because that gives autonomy to the person who’s uploading it to really feel like, “I’m in charge of this video. I’m responsible for it. I get to say who sees it and who doesn’t see it.” I mean of course we tell them as CTI staff, we can see that because we’re owners of the course, but they choose who they want to share their video with and that’s super, super important. That really was a game changer for us being able to not, because before, let me just throw this out there, Sam knows this, and he helped us do it before, like I said, we have 250 agencies, so that meant we had almost 250 classes, right Sam, that you and your tech department created up for us in order to make it private.

It was too much. I love how you guys really were super responsive as Jaymie said too, this is what our need is and we need it like yesterday, so how can you guys help us? You guys were able just to jump in there. And I love that now because I think that other teacher induction programs or like you said, even with the university, it’s going to make a big difference with people being able to upload their video, keep the privacy, and really that coach determining who sees that video and that gives that candidate confidence that their stuff, their observation, their conversation isn’t just out there for anyone to see. Thanks Jamie. I just wanted to add that extra thing about the privacy in there.

Jaymie Baiza:

Yes. Going along with that privacy, so when they’re live together in our coaching session and they’re on breakout rooms sharing information, they don’t have that video ready yet because they’re still talking about what they want to be observed on or what feedback they want to give to their coach. We do give them time to kind of collaborate and connect with each other to introduce each other with each other and get more information. Then as their asynchronous activity, that’s when we ask them, okay, this is where you’re going to upload your video. This is when you’re going to give feedback. They don’t do this live with each other. They do this after the session is over as their asynchronous activity. Then we also provide, so there’s three layers of feedback that our coaches get. They do the self-reflection, they do the peer feedback, and then our new and returning coaches receive feedback from A CTI staff member. Again, we use the same markers. They’re just getting those layers of feedback.

Sam Farley:

Outstanding. Outstanding. Thank you for sharing that. I think a lot of people are always curious if they’re not familiar with Go React or even if they’re familiar, how are other people using it and benefiting from that. I know the markers are definitely one of those customizable features that lets you build them out how you find them most effective. I know you guys over the years have really edited and changed. It’s been fun to see that program grow and how you guys are using it. Angel, you mentioned a little bit about partnering with GoReact and helping to build that out. How has the GoReact really helped you, not just the software itself but the team talk about the experience and really partnering with GoReact and helping your program. How has that helped?

Angel Van Horn:

Okay, I’m going to answer that, but I’m going to answer really quickly back to those markers real quick because another thing that’s really important is when the candidate, again, we have probably maybe six, 700 candidates in our online program, which means they only see their coach online and their coach only sees their teaching through these videos. The coach, when they’re giving feedback, they can have a planning conversation with the candidate first, of course about the observation and really find out what it is that that candidate wants feedback on and they can adjust those markers. I’ve spent some time really training my coaches to make sure they understand that. Look, when you talk to your candidate and you have that conversation about what kind of feedback are you looking for from me, they can go in and personalize those markers. They can be changed for every observation.

I think that makes a really big difference too, as they’re providing feedback. I just wanted to tap that. Now back to the relationship. Well, that’s fun. I enjoy talking about that. I love that they connected us from the beginning, Sam. You and me and Tanya made it way back when, and I think we even got your name from one of our, I think Dr. Hall from one of our when she was using with another program with hers. I love that it’s come through word of mouth and people who were happy and satisfied with the support, but we are able to contact you, as you know, you’re in my phone, we’re able to contact you, we’re able to check in with you. I have questions. It really is quick response back. I like to say Sam squared, but between you and Sam, I think Butterfield, right?

We’re able to get all of our questions answered and like we said, when we really needed to move from, Hey, this isn’t what we need right now. We don’t want 300 classes, we really want to have one class. Everybody private be able to share. I know Don, just me. Our team was amazed that we were able to be like, no, they’re going to have it before Coach Connections hits. So we got this. I know that Jamie and I enjoy when we see you guys at conferences, you’re always present at there and also our little site visits where you come out and get a Panera and we have fun together and chat and really talk about what our needs are. One of the things that I learned at our Panera trip as I’m kind of smiling was I didn’t realize that there were so many reports that we could pull.

The reports were also really helpful. And that came from just the sitting down one-on-one conversations with you guys about, “Hey, what else do we need?” Well, you know what we need. We need a way to see if these 1800 coaches did what we asked. And I was going through and making check marks on my spreadsheet thinking that was the only thing I had. It was really great to be able to sit down and talk through that. Then you go, “Oh, well there’s reports Angel.” “Oh, there’s reports. Of course there is.” That was really helpful. Thank you. I think that’s what you wanted me to say there, right about what we get from you guys and I appreciate it.

Sam Farley:

Yeah, no, I mean it always helps to add the context of that there is a team behind the product that is there to support you and listen,

Angel Van Horn:

And Matt, our tech support, right? Got to give him a shout out.

Sam Farley:

Oh yeah. We love our tech support guys. Jaymie, I didn’t know if you had anything to add to that as well.

Jaymie Baiza:

Yeah, one of the values that we really have is that customer support, for CTI, we really are high. What can we do to support our candidates? What can we do to support our coaches? We really value that high customer support. I think that’s why we get along so well with GoReact because the same, you guys uphold the same value of great customer service. I remember when we were first launching GoReact and it was new to us and it was also new to our coaches. There was this scramble of trying to learn the program as we are trying to teach the program, and you made yourself available even though we’re in different time zones to be available right there with our coaches and for us. It looked like we knew what we were doing as we were launching the program. That was a huge thank you to just providing us with that support while we were learning the program. And then there was something, oh, there was one more thing.

Angel Van Horn:

That’s a great reminder, Jaymie. I kind of forgot that Sam came to those beginning ones just to be like, “Okay, we’re not sure.” But Sam was right there with us. Thanks for remembering that.

Jaymie Baiza:

I think also the responsiveness of support as well. You really helped brainstorm with us, come up with some solutions that’ll might help run our program better, and then even future thinking of collaborating with our LMS and having that opportunity to really connect. We’re really looking forward to all the future plans we have with GoReact as well.

Sam Farley:

Outstanding, outstanding. Well, I appreciate the kudos. Not necessarily needed, but always appreciated. And yes, I’ve enjoyed working with you guys over the years to make sure, and really a lot of what you have done, as we mentioned in the beginning, our focus as GoReact was a higher education tool for students. It wasn’t until we work a lot with teacher ed programs. We work with probably 350 close to 400 different teacher ed programs across the country. We didn’t even think about after they graduate that there was a need out there until you guys came to us and said, “No, no, no, no.” What they did in their teacher ed program, we are continuing that and your tool is what we need. You have helped us learn a lot on the transition from higher ed to K 12 in that district environment on how to support teachers as professionals and not as students.

And so I personally want to thank you guys for helping us because of that. We have a number of other districts that use us for induction and now leading into professional development and continuing that. So before I had another few questions I want to ask, but please remember if you have questions, pop those into the Q&A part there and we can always go over that as well.

But my question to you is, while you guys, we’ve talked a lot about how this is using your induction program, a lot of people participating in today’s webinar who have registered may not be necessarily an induction, but they’re still in that teacher development side. If you were to meet someone on the street who wasn’t an induction, but in more of the teacher development and PD development, what would you tell them about the power of video and in their perspective versus your perspective, what would be your advice to them? I’ll let either of you go.

Angel Van Horn:

Which one? Which one? Okay, I’ll start real quick. I do think the power of video, like I said earlier, just to be able to see things that the teacher can’t see. Usually when they’re teaching, they’re looking at one or two things and the video is a great third point. I know that more of a Lauren Lipton mentoring matters type thing there. That’s going to be in a lot of PD. I was sharing my screen earlier because I wanted to just remind us that, and this is what I would say in my 32nd clip, right? It’s like this brings the teacher, the reflective coach, the PD person into the classroom. But even if it’s just self-reflection and the candidate or the coach is just uploading the video for their own, being able to see and make those markers and self-reflect and see where they need to make changes.

But then to be able to have a coach, because Vicky here, Victoria is not the same person who uploaded the video, so this is her coach is being able to go through here and just make these comments. They’re able to give them suggestions that if I were just having a conversation with Jamie and she was my coach, I will not remember. I’m not going to be like, oh wait, stop. Let me write that down. Exactly. Everything’s here for me. I can go back any time and look at it and go, okay, wait, this is the sentence frame. Let me write that one down. I really find it to be not just practical, but practically amazing because we are able to see the video 2, 3, 4 times and every time you see something different and being able to have somebody else’s perspective on it.

Even then, if I wanted to go back through two weeks from now before I have my site administrator observation and kind of go like, “What? Wait, what did my coach remind me of? Okay, now I got those things down.” I think it also really, really, I can’t say it enough, is it just gives us that whole concept of the classroom at one time. Again, third point, being able to just see what’s happening, notice things, what about these two students to the left here? Are you noticing things here that if she’s looking at this other group that she may not even be seeing there? So I always say to my candidates, it gives me just an opportunity by using the video to see things you may not be seeing kind of to be a mirror and an extra set of eyes in your classroom. Jaymie, what do you want to add?

Jaymie Baiza:

I would say talk to Angel because exactly what she said, but it’s a great artifact to keep when you’re reflecting on your own practice. And just like I said, video is a very powerful tool. In a PD session, even if you want to see exemplars or if you want to show a PD an opportunity, if you’re doing some sort of training, you can share that video with people who are attending your PD and use the markers to identify certain goals or use markers to identify whatever your training is about. There’s so much flexibility and opportunity to really engage in the tools that GoReact has to offer.

Sam Farley:

No, I appreciate that. I think while not everyone is a fan of video and there are critics out there, some of the things I hear often are that, “Well, I can’t see everything on video. I need to be in the classroom and I need that.” But the one thing I hear most from teachers is the want for more support, the want for more development. Because oftentimes teachers might get once or twice a year, they get someone to come observe. Even with that, the feedback isn’t always tangible because I’m not remembering and reflecting. As you talked about increasing the touch points and that reflective ability to go back and see the video. I’m a big sports fan, so I often refer to GoReact as game film for the classroom because we can constantly go back and review that, not just the one time to get the feedback. As you mentioned, I can go back again.

Again, every time I watch it, I see something new. My wife isn’t a big fan of watching movies again and again, but every time I watch a movie again, I go, oh, I forgot about this part. Oh, I remember this part. So things that we need and videos that I’m curious, obviously we were working with you before the pandemic and then the pandemic hit and video became very popular during 2020 and into 2021. Since then, we’ve definitely seen a lot of people go, oh, now we can go back to normal, back to what it is, and we don’t need video anymore. What would be your feedback to some of those people who think, oh, we needed it for this time, but we don’t need it anymore. Now I can go back to the classroom and I can observe people that way. What’s your feedback to that, Jamie?

Jaymie Baiza:

Well, we were in GoReact prior to the pandemic and when the pandemic happened, we were ready. We were kind of ready for that transition or not even a transition for us, it was just part of our practice already. To share that it didn’t change for us. Actually, it just enhanced and provided us more opportunities to find ways and expand on ways to provide feedback because then we were able to open observation, the tool to use it as observation for candidates, not just for our online candidates but also with our other districts. Some preferred it that way. There’s a sub shortage that’s just because the pandemic is over, there’s still some residual effects of teacher shortage, sub shortages, so teachers can’t get out of the classroom to observe each other. So we still need this tool to help with that for one of those aspects there. Angel?

Angel Van Horn:

Yeah, no, that’s exactly what I was going to say, Jaymie. The residual effects are still there for sure, and that is the biggest thing is that candidates or coaches can’t get out of the classroom for their candidate observations with that sub shortage. I do have several agencies who have stayed on with GoReact. Like you said, Sam, during the pandemic we did open up the observation opportunity and pretty much it was program wide because that’s what we knew, that’s what we used. We still have several of our agencies that even though they do have a face-to-face coach that meets with them weekly in person, they’re still using GoReact for their observation just because of the benefits of being able to see the video.

Jim Knight, if you’re out there and you’re looking for research of why use video, Jim Knight is a great researcher on the use of video just start with, and those agencies continue on to use GoReact because of the benefits of being able to watch video several times to be able to use it as a third point. To be able to have the candidate, I think this is one of the best benefits, having the candidate go through the video first and kind of get their perspective on what they thought the lesson was, where did they see the strength, where did they see places for improvement before I see the video, then I see the video.

As a coach, I’m able to go through and okay, I kind of see where they’re coming from. Either they’re over here or they’re over here, usually one or the other. Then I’m able to go in and add my own comments through. Then when we meet in, I won’t say in person, but virtually, we’re able to then have that conversation. I do hear people say, in fact just yesterday in one of our meetings, Jamie with the writing team, one of the coaches was concerned like, oh, we were losing that face-to-face, losing the people touch. I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s true at all.

I think that it gives them the opportunity to prepare for the conversation better so that you have a richer conversation. When we are meeting like this, the hard work’s been done, now we can just go through and have a conversation about what we wrote, what we saw. We’ve both looked at it. I think it improves it. I don’t think it detracts from it at all, the relationships are important obviously. The relationship is the core of mentoring, so I wouldn’t want any tool that detracts from that relationship, but I would argue completely against that.

Sam Farley:

No, I mean to add perspective to that, it’s not that this is replacing anything we’re adding on to making it stronger. And if we don’t want to take you out of the classroom to observe, we don’t want to take you away from that face-to-face time. But if we can add tools like this into that context, how much more powerful is that time when we are there together that we are better prepared? Now you have that documented evidence, that video-based assessment of competencies that we’re looking for, we’re making that time together even more effective. I definitely appreciate that context.

There was a question that came up and Angel, I see that you were typing a response to it, but let’s go ahead and just answer it. The question was, GoReact seems like an amazing tool. I’m so impressed and hopeful. How about a tip for those teachers still resistant even with the confidentiality being understood? Hold on. Even with the confidentiality being understaffed to observe and growth mentioned. I wonder if you have any testimonials of those resistance but transformed after the process for us coaches to share. Is there anything you guys have heard and do you have your own converts, people who have become believers in video who may have been resistant at first, especially when it came to things like confidentiality, things like that?

Angel Van Horn:

Well, I can’t say it enough either that I think the privacy was a game changer. Being able to know that you’re uploading something that’s going to remain private and only the person uploading it and adding feedback can see that. But also I would say the districts, the teachers who are choosing to use GoReact when it’s not required anymore from their district. Thankfully our director in our fiscal department has agreed that it’s worth the cost. We work together on that. We’re offering it not just to our online program like we used to prior to the pandemic, since we opened it up for everybody. Anybody who wants to continue using GoReact, it’s part of the funding. We’re doing it. And we definitely have districts who are using GoReact, even though they’re not required to, the need isn’t there that they have to anymore, but they found the benefit of it, so they’re still opting to use it. I think that’s the best answer for that.

But as far as teacher testimonials, I mean I have 150 coaches in my online program that use it weekly with 1 to 10 candidates that they’re using it in. It does make everything easier that they can go in. I wouldn’t even say easier. It’s not that necessarily that it’s easier, it’s more robust. You can get all the responses, I can see all the feedback, they can get their candidates. It’s more time efficient for them just to go in, provide feedback, and then have that conversation. I watched about five yesterday videos in about an hour and provided feedback to my coaches and then was really able to kind of do a check in on even my veteran coaches that they’ve been supporting candidates for 10, 15 years with me.

I’m still able to go in and just be like, “Hey, let me just do a quick check in, see how everything’s going, check in on those conversations.” And of course, I was amazed. They’re amazing coaches, but it was great even just to be able to check in anytime it’s time efficient for me. I don’t have to, oh, I can’t see your video because it’s on YouTube and you need to do the share permissions or some of that stuff that you can get with other platforms. I hope that answers the question a little bit.

Sam Farley:

Yeah, no, I think that added some great context to that. I appreciate that. Well, if we didn’t get to your question, I’m sure we can find ways to get you answers and we’ll follow up with you as well. Our time is up today. But I wanted to thank Jamie Angel, both of you so much. You’ve provided so much context and valuable information and shared a lot of key takeaways. Thank you to you guys. Thank you to our attendees for joining and making this a great interaction experience. I hope to see you in future GoReact webinars. Jamie and Angel, I know I’ll see you again and just look forward to our continued relationship. For those of you who are on the call who’d like to know more, we will please follow up with us and we’d love to share more with you. But again, thank you guys for all you do appreciate it.