“Digitizing My Teaching Philosophy”

I was initially nervous about creating a digital video for this class because I had no prior experience doing a project like this or working on video software platforms like iMovie or WeVideo. The lack of experience and familiarity definitely intensified feelings of doubt within myself. However, as I began embarking on the video composition process, I found that it was a very inspiring exercise for me. My purpose in creating this video (other than as part of this class assignment, of course J) was to provide an overview of my teaching values and beliefs that I could share with my fellow teaching colleagues inside and outside of my school, my administrators, and my students’ families. Inspired by the Womack article on accommodations for learners and my role as a special education teacher, I made sure to create two versions of the video- one with subtitles and one without subtitles- so that my video was more accessible. For a variety of reasons, I have experienced my work as a special education teacher not always been highlighted or showcased on a wider level. Additionally, I am not always comfortable with giving myself praise or recognition for what I do in the classroom. I have a more modest approach to my work. However, this assignment gave me the opportunity to encapsulate the hard work that my students and I do each and every day.

During the composition of my video, I started with a very skeletal outline of my script. I wanted to make sure that I provided context about the city of New Orleans because this place has significantly influenced me as a person and an educator. Using the first stanza of a poem I wrote two years ago as my voiceover for the first section of my video, I matched up images with the words I spoke. I completed the visuals and audio for this first minute of my video before working on the next section. This also allowed me to play around with the features on WeVideo and understand the capabilities on this platform such as uploading images, recording audio clips, layering text with images, zooming in on images, and fading sounds on audio clips.

A draft outline of my digital video voiceover script

Next, I wanted to ensure that I could give my audience an accurate depiction of my teaching and my classroom while keeping my students’ privacy intact. I worked strategically to select images and video clips that did not feature students’ faces yet still communicated the engagement and multimodal learning taking place in my classroom. I created a folder on my computer specifically for the video and started saving pictures that fit my criteria. This process was time-intensive and required patience. Once I narrowed down my images, I printed the images I wanted to use, cut them individually, and sequenced them in a way that made sense with my voiceover script. After watching an example of another teacher’s digital teaching philosophy in class, I got an idea to contact a few families of students I had previously worked with to see if they would be willing to send me thirty-second video clips to use in my video. All of them enthusiastically agreed, and I sent them the following questions to consider: 1) What positive experiences do you have of me as your child’s teacher? and 2) How did I help your student? What things did I do? I felt that this provided evidence to support my statements.

My goal is to send this video (along with my infographic) to my coworkers and administrators on my travels back from Bread Loaf. Since my school’s month-long professional development training overlapped with much of my summer at Bread Loaf and I did not get to meet many of the new members of my staff, these mediums will give them quick insights about who I am as a teacher. At the beginning of the year and during open house, I will use the infographic as a handout for parents. My video will play on loop in my room during open house. I will also post my infographic and video on my classroom website so parents and students can reference them. Just like the student work samples featured in my video are artifacts of my classroom, this video will now become a special artifact and extension of my teaching and my classroom.