I was observing a teacher recently who left me dumbfounded.
I was sitting in the back of the room with the principal, who was there for the teacher’s formal observation. The lesson was about three-dimensional shapes.
But instead of taking the lead, the teacher fired up a video on the smart board that did the teaching for her.
It was a somewhat goofy, animated cartoon you might find on YouTube.
Every couple of minutes she would pause the video and add her two cents. She would hold up a shape, ask a question or two, and then call on the half dozen students paying attention.
The students were sitting on a carpet in front of the screen and she was sitting in a chair off to the side. The moment the video started, four or five boys began battling a severe case of boredom.
Having seemingly lost all muscular function, they were melting into the fibers. It was as if they were hit by a volley of tranquilizing blow darts. Although not quite as affected, most of the other students appeared dazed and lost in daydreams to pass the time.
My goodness.
It was brutal. I felt terrible for the kids, but especially for the group of boys that were so painfully enduring the ordeal. Bless them for having the discipline not to get up and walk out of the room.
I didn’t speak to the principal about her thoughts on the lesson. However, she seemed perfectly content, hardly jotting down a note.
Later I learned that the struggling boys were being considered for interventions, behavior contracts, and psychological testing because of what a few adults felt were attention disorders.
Infuriating. Because, to me, there was nothing wrong or abnormal about any of them. They just needed good teaching.
They needed to move and explore. They needed to use their hands to build, create, fix, figure out, or dissect. They needed inspiration and challenge. They needed mystery and purpose, fun and novelty.
They needed to be shown how cool geometry can be.
The last thing they needed was more screen time. Providing compelling lessons that all students want to pay attention to is your job. Besides supervision, it’s the biggest responsibility of teaching.
The more you pawn off this responsibility to video—or anything else for that matter—the worse it is for students.
Seeing a comedian in person is a completely different experience than watching them on Netflix. It’s the same with teaching—provided you have the skills and content knowledge to capture and keep attention.
Here at SCM, our classroom management approach is designed to give you the maximum time, energy, and freedom to stand uninterrupted in front of your students and teach them something cool.
But you must take advantage of it.
Expert classroom management is half the battle. Important but incomplete. The other half is lesson performance, which in this day and age must be strong. The good news is that anyone can do it.
Anyone can learn, apply, and see staggering results. This is a topic we’ve covered extensively in The Happy Teacher Habits, as well as in other books, but there are also articles available in our archive.
The broader point is this: If your classroom management is solid but your students are still bored and wilting, it’s not them.
It’s you.
Despite it all, despite the smart phones and social media and a zillion other present-day challenges, good teaching still works.
“They just don’t care” is a false assumption and akin to giving up on students.
But you must put away the videos. You must limit laptop use, student research, recordings, centers, computer programs, and other modes of self-learning. You have to offer something different, interesting, weird, scary, surprising, amazing, baffling, etc.
In other words, something they can’t get anywhere else.
You must also sell your lessons and prove to your students why whatever you’re learning is worth the effort.
You must draw your students so deeply into the topic through storytelling, modeling, playacting, and explicit detail that they forget where they are. They lose track of time and even their own consciousness.
It’s the only way.
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This is spot on! It’s what I am trying to convey to the frustrated teachers in the world. 2025 teaching is difficult and is not for the uninspired. The only answer I can see is finding a mentor who is a successful teacher, who is still filled with joy and the drive to improve and learn from her! And of course read your books.
Yes, I totally agree. However, the problem is that teaching policy has been influenced by tech bros. For example, my school district has–finally–banned phones in classrooms, but they still allow use during lunch time! Cell phones aren’t almost never used for teaching, but they still cannot totally ban them. As for me, I’ve taught and presented a couple of times at the TESOL convention on the uses of computer assisted language learning, but my viewpoint has completely turned. Video use is an extension of this time-proven, bad policy. In fact, with AI coming on strong, it’s only looking worse.
Yes, yes, yes!!
I occasionally (about 5 times total this past year) use videos in my 6th grade social studies classes to pique my students’ interest and give them a different perspective. I give students guided notes and a couple of minutes to preview the notes before we watch the video. After the video, they work with partners to fill in any answers they missed during the video. Then, we clarify answers as a whole class. I often feel this is cheating on my part, because they are just receiving information I could give them without the cool visuals, but it is also giving them practice paying attention, looking for specific information, assisting classmates. The videos are a jumping off point for the rest of the lesson or unit.
At the end of the school year, I give my students a survey on their opinions, likes, and dislikes, of my classes. Every year, about 1/4 of them tell me that they would like more videos and guided notes. (Not gonna happen, specifically for the reasons you mention in your article here.)
I think this is a smart and judicious use of technology. Guided notes definitely can help reinforce material.
Noticed this myself in the last few years. The same short YouTube clips that captured their interest and attention a few years ago no longer have the same effect. The minute the video comes on, a large portion tunes out. They are screen-saturated, so I have moved to presenting the same info myself.
I do, on occasion, use a video clip in a lesson however it is for something that enhances the lesson that I cannot do myself. Example: a Birds Eye view video of our school from a drone in social studies. I cannot understand teaching 3D shapes, however without giving them the shapes.
While I can see the value in using a video occasionally (and I really mean only occasionally) to augment a lesson, I’m so glad to see this particular article. Using videos for everything, including movement breaks and calming down breaks, just seems completely out of hand and pretty lazy.
I worked with a teacher who had a lovely idea for lessons surrounding a favorite children’s book, including teaching the children to make a food included in the story, but her first impulse was to use a video to tell the story. I asked her if she knew the story by heart – and she did – so told her to TELL the story (rather than show the video or even read the book aloud) to the children. So she put on a headscarf as if she was the main character and then told the story – the children were transfixed! The next day we helped the children learn to make the food in the story and she read the story again to them from the book – and they loved it. The theme of the story was used throughout the week in math, writing, drawing, singing, reciting, and puppet play.
As a sub I get to see a lot of teaching styles, and one in particular stood out. A history teacher (it’s only his 2nd year teaching full time) uses a lot of direct instruction, and google slides with historical pictures. But he engages with the kids, he relates the events back to them, and he is so animated. In a class of nearly 30 kids, only 1-2 were not paying attention. But he also insists the phones go in the backpacks too. 100% of them comply. The man teaches high school freshmen! But he’s also teaching them to love history. I think videos have their place….once the initial teaching has taken place, and maybe for reinforcement. But the students want YOU to teach them. They prefer it.
Amen to this! I did the same in my classroom, and the students (of varying age groups) all loved learning about music history! Other years it might have been the elements of music, or instruments, etc., but the fact is children love to learn. When you engage them in this way, you can go into a lot of depth on each subject, and the more you do, the more engaged they become. It’s truly the very best part of teaching. P.S. All of my students were SPED with behavior problems, but not when they are engaged!
Spot on regarding boys! My classes are always filled with more boys than girls since I teach technology related courses. Thanks for the reminder!
Absolutely 100% yes! And the chilling aspect is that the principal was okay with that “style” of “teaching”. Sadly, video lessons and online pre-formatted summaries seem to be the trend in education, and that style of teaching is in the elementary grades. As a sub, I get to see all kinds of teaching styles and assignments, and—without question—the classrooms with the most attentive students are the ones with minimal video formats and maximum “old school” teaching styles as described in Michael’s article. Nothing can replace a board and a marker, with a good teacher explaining a concept and writing notes on the board, combined with enthusiastic student discussion of the subject—plus students taking notes. Students don’t—aren’t expected to—take notes, anymore.
Yeah. Those damn lazy teachers. They have unlimited resources and time; they just don’t want to perform miracles. They get all the support they could ever want to prevent disruption every time they open their mouths to teach or explain from administrators that are focused on what students are doing and not knit picking and micromanaging their every move. I know some teachers who think kids should spend time reading from books. What are those lazy sobs going to be doing? Record keeping? Grading? Not on the schools time! It’s not as simple as “no screens” and “dynamic planning” etc. etc. First and foremost it is about being willing to provide the resources where they are needed most. We’ve been nicking and diming this and then putting the blame on the overwhelmed staff for not meeting unreasonable expectations.
I tired of all the gaslighting. Maybe after teaching the same content for several years with a good colleagues.
Thank you! I was feeling very gross for using videos but I know that, after a while, students tune out my voice and the motion and commentary from videos can help them in ways that I can’t always do.
Also, I teach English as an Additional Language in an elementary school and videos help with vocabulary and word association.
Love this article because as a sub and former teacher smartboards and youtube clips are overused. They even have someone read them a story online. We are doing a disservice to children by teaching with too much tech. Finally someone else recognizes this as being an issue to good teaching.
Bravo for pointing this out!
I use a lot of videos because I teach visual mediums – photography and visual art. I create slides showing the concepts, with videos embedded in the slides. Videos show technique application tutorials and examples. The slides work well for students to replay at their own pace and for tardy or missing students to catch up on the lesson.
I agree with this article. Our students are drowning in technology boredom. There are the good, bad, and ugly parts of technology that have now become a hindrance to our children. Not only are students bombarded with being on their electronic devices throughout the school day, but let’s not discuss how it has become our children’s babysitters at home (another day/article for that topic). Unfortunately, some of our students don’t know how to function without an electronic device, I see it daily at the elementary level. It is truly a sad day when students have free time or recess, and some look “lost” because they do not have an electronic device. Do we remember how to just play?
Our job is to TEACH and that’s what I enjoy doing. I do think showing a video for a specific demonstration or aww effect can be an effective tool but not to teach an entire lesson. Also, another dilemma is when the curriculum provides so many videos, links, or lessons that are all tide to showing students a video.
Ty: I’m not sure what you are trying to say???
I think it’s key to separate out youtube-style summaries of content from film as a whole medium.
I use videos in my class in a couple of contexts, and students report back that they appreciate them:
(1) to watch a full film that they would NOT be watching at home, particularly a classic, with the intent of analyzing the film as a piece of literature; Twelve Angry Men to analyze filmmaking techniques, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington to evaluate leadership skills, etc.
(2) To take students on a virtual journey. I teach geography, and I can have engaging, immersive lessons about a culture and a place, but they don’t really UNDERSTAND the area until they see someone interact with it. This can be risky (a lot of travel shows are deathly boring, so I have to choose carefully), but I know those lessons stay with my kids. I know these videos work (when used judiciously), because kids tell me it works, and they bring them up later. That’s kind of my key, actually: if a kid doesn’t bring video up in a end-of-term reflection, I know it was probably a bust.
But to just explain a concept? Nah. I can do that. The youtube videos might give me an idea about HOW I can do that, but the kids don’t need to see the video version!
LT – I think those are excellent ways to utilize film / video in the classroom. There are certain things that only video or actual experience can demonstrate. You can’t take your students up in a hot air balloon… although that would be a good experience, it’s not practical! 🙂 I used two videos during the last week of school to have my sixth-grade students compare and contrast interpretations of the same story (Ray Bradbury’s “All Summer In A Day,” — there’s a short film school type video on YouTube, and also the 1983 film). We read and thoroughly discussed the short story a couple weeks ago. This week, I had my students divide a sheet of notebook paper into 3 sections, then write their thoughts, comparisons, contrasts, emotions, etc., as they watched the two films. My students were transfixed by the 1983 film, which absolutely floored me! They were focused on the story, the emotions, the long musical scene-setting. The slowness of the film worried me, but they LOVED it; they said they preferred the 1983 film to the more modern, shorter one, and about half my students said they liked the original short story text better than the videos because they prefer how they picture things in their minds.
You lose kids on video . Sometimes I’ll Google to get ideas for engaging lessons.
One key way that a principal judges a teacher’s performance is by how well the lesson incorporates technology. Obviously, there is more to technology than watching a video on the Clear Touch. And it depends on the video. For example, playing a video that uses music and movement to learn the vocab associated with geometry,(there are a LOT of new words and definitions to learn!), is a fun way to kick start the unit.
But no question, kids will really engage if the teacher follows up with read alouds, a variety of manipulatives, artwork assignments, story writing and group work. You have to keep things moving!
I never show a movie video in class anymore because today’s students just cannot sustain the attention needed to follow it. Sad but true.
I agree with this article. I will also say that the occasional video CLIP can enhance a lesson or add to understanding for students who don’t have experience with what is being taught. I teach English Language Development to students new to the U.S. and to English. My most recent video clip showed students riding unicycles. My students were familiar with bicycles and even tricycles; they were not familiar with unicycles (one of our vocabulary words), so the video helped them see what a unicycle is and how it is ridden. They were totally involved in the 30 second clip and had many comments afterward.
It is not the use of video that is the problem. The problem is how it’s being used. I am of the opinion that video can be used as a very effective teaching tool. The effective application of it depends on a number of variable – the objective to be achieved, the content, age and grade of the learners etc. I don’t agree that there should be a blanket ban of video in the classroom.
Michael- what would you recommend for Spanish teachers?
I try and infuse my own passion for learning a language and how mind expanding it is—I even show them examples in English that show how weird our language is so they can appreciate other language systems, but I still have many that just don’t care. They don’t let it in. They look bored half the time and tune me out even tho I’m giving them gold while other students really enjoy it.
I realize they just want the college credit but what should I do? Any ideas for me?
It’s an interesting thought, but we also should not be lecturing. Educational systems encourage independent student-learning.