TMS worked with teachers and students in ELA Classes at East New York Transit Tech High in Brooklyn to explore Poetry Genius as a tool for identifying features of text, getting to know authors intentions, and starting discussions around specific passages of text. This video was quickly produced to capture and share the process and spark discussion and reflection among TTHS teachers.
Authentic Video for Professional Development
Video is a great way to spark conversations within schools as part of professional development, but they can be time-consuming, distracting to students and costly to produce. A teacher exploring a classroom process is in a unique position to capture evidence related to inquiry questions that can be discussed and reflected on outside of class, so we are exploring ways that teachers can capture useful sequences of video clips in the flow of their practice.
How this video was made
The following video was intentionally filmed “Guerrilla-style” using a smartphone. The shooting involved in-camera editing and was edited minimally (on the same phone) using the mobile and cloud-based video editor WeVideo. The intention was to find a middle ground between more involved short documentary productions exploring classroom processes and best practices that typically shoot more and require more editing time, and raw hands-off videos of classrooms shot from tripods that often don’t capture small moments between teachers and students or close-up details.
Rhys Daunic from TMS shot and edited the video in the span of one class period, and a prep period to edit. As co-facilitator of the student process with ELA teacher Patricia Joseph, Rhys was able to float behind students as they worked, and quickly capture moments related to the discussions about process and value he’d been having with Ms. Joseph. The result has since been used within Transit Tech discuss class management of students engaging with digital tools during class, and further, the value added by engaging with texts in this way.
The Media Spot 