Teachers See Themselves as the Camera Sees Them

It wasn’t quite business as usual one morning last week at Landell Elementary School in Cypress.

Across the campus courtyard in Room 7, Julie Gautreau’s fifth-grade class had some visitors. But they weren’t there to teach the students a lesson. It was their teacher who was getting some help.

As Gautreau wove her way between clusters of desks, peppering students with questions, two video cameras recorded the classroom action. Working one of the cameras, fellow teacher Susan Normoyle zoomed in and out on Gautreau and her students -- some of whom answered questions eagerly, some of whom daydreamed.

Gautreau and Normoyle will soon sit down together to watch the video and hash out what worked in the classroom and what didn’t. Their efforts are part of an unusual peer mentoring program aimed at improving veteran teachers’ classroom techniques. Participants say it is a rare chance to bring a nonjudgmental set of eyes into their classrooms.

“So often, we feel as if it’s just us, alone, in our classrooms,” Gautreau said. “Having someone we trust there as a coach, who we can discuss ideas with, helps us to take risks.”

The Los Angeles-based Cotsen Family Foundation mentoring program, now in its fourth year, operates in 10 schools in Southern California. At each campus, the foundation pays a veteran teacher’s salary for two years to free those teachers from their own classrooms to observe and critique their colleagues.

The foundation was started by Lloyd E. Cotsen, the former president and chief executive of Neutrogena Corp.

Like mentors at other schools involved in the program, Normoyle works closely with the seven teachers at Landell who volunteered to participate. With guidance from Normoyle at the start of each year, teachers choose to work on a set of classroom skills -- such as assessing student performance or planning effective lessons -- and techniques for teaching academic subjects.

Normoyle meets individually with the teachers each week to discuss previous classes and plan upcoming ones. Before last week’s videotaping, for example, Normoyle and Gautreau, a teacher for 12 years, reviewed her yearlong goal of devising lesson plans that engage high- and low-performing students.

During the taping, Normoyle recorded students who were involved and others who were disengaged while she scribbled notes on the types of questions Gautreau was asking.

“When we meet, it will give us a chance to look at what types of questions she was asking: Were they helpful? Which kids responded and which did not?” Normoyle said.

Gautreau and the other Landell teachers said that although it took a while to get accustomed to the video camera, they welcome Normoyle’s presence in their classrooms. With more than 30 years of teaching experience, they said, she provides a valuable perspective and is able to identify subtle problems.

Several said, for example, that Normoyle’s practice of mapping the paths a teacher habitually walked through the classroom made it clear that they were unknowingly spending time unequally with the students.

As a mentor, Normoyle also administers the $700 each teacher receives annually to attend education conferences and $300 for classroom supplies. If teachers miss school days to attend conferences, Cotsen pays for substitutes.

An important feature of the program is that it offers teachers the chance to focus on and improve their skills rather than highlighting their shortcomings, Normoyle and others said.

“We can’t ever forget that [the school principal] is our boss and she’s responsible for evaluating us,” Gautreau said. “Susan is not our evaluator; she’s our colleague, and she’s there to collaborate with us.”

The result, teachers said, is an environment in which they feel more willing to take risks. Laura Forgione, a 20-year teaching veteran, said working with Normoyle had given her the confidence to loosen her grip on her classroom somewhat and design more student-run lessons.

“I always thought that the classroom had to revolve around me,” Forgione said. “Talking with Susan helped me recognize that students can do an extremely effective job helping each other learn.”

It is no accident, Cotsen officials said, that participating teachers are experienced and well regarded at their schools. Unlike other mentoring programs that focus on young or underperforming teachers, Cotsen targets teachers with at least three -- and usually many more -- years of experience.

The point, said Cotsen Foundation Executive Director Judy Johnson, is to try to improve a school’s faculty from the top down.

“We want to see whether good teachers can learn to be great,” Johnson said. “If you really want to get great teaching at a school, you don’t start by building up from the valleys. You start on the mountaintops and go from there.”

Some education experts, however, question such an approach. Improving any teacher’s capabilities through mentoring is a plus, said Lewis Solmon, a former dean of the UCLA School of Education and current director of the Milken Foundation’s Teacher Advancement Program. But some teachers, he said, need extra support more than others.

“Every teacher can get better,” he said. “But some teachers are so poorly trained and have had so little professional development. That’s what we have to work on.”

Regardless, Johnson said, plans are in the works to expand the mentoring program next year. As for Landell Principal Sunghie Okino, she hopes Cotsen approves the school’s application for another two-year stint. “I have a whole list of teachers,” she said, “who have seen what this program is about and who want to participate.”