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Parental Involvement Key to Quality Education

Updated 16 Oct 2006

The lights dim, and high school students scrunch down in their seats. A videotape is loaded into a videocassette recorder, and for the next 20 minutes, a TV screen - not a teacher - becomes the focus.

At Omaha Burke High School, students in Lisa Gatzmeyer's freshman English honors class watch a video of George Orwell's "Animal Farm" after reading the book.


It's a scene that plays out regularly in high schools in courses ranging from English and art to social studies and science. Teachers might be more tempted to use videos these days because more classrooms are equipped with televisions, more tapes are available on more subjects, and video appeals to students who have grown up on a heavy diet of Nintendo and 40-channel cable television.

A spot check at a handful of Midlands high schools indicated that watching videos fills anywhere from 4 percent to 13 percent of class time through a semester, depending on the course and grade level.  [This is also true for the Scotia-Glenville Junior High, by my calculations.]

How videos are used in school is among ways to judge classroom vigor, one of the issues highlighted in The World-Herald's "Lost in High School" series in September. The articles described experiences of five students at Millard South High School.

Do videos enhance learning by giving teachers another way to connect with students? Or are they simply a way to fill teaching time and provide a crutch for students with weak reading skills?

Kathryn Piller, a member of the Nebraska Board of Education, says that most teachers use videos effectively but that she's seen others who routinely use them to fill time or as a misguided attempt to reward students.

"It's really detrimental," said Piller, a former high school teacher and principal. "Look at all the learning that's being lost."

Teachers too often play videocassettes because they are strapped for time, says Kevin Walker, director of the national school reform group Project Appleseed. While a video is playing, the teacher plans a lesson for another class, corrects homework or takes care of other business.

Jane Howard, an English teacher at Thomas Jefferson High School in Council Bluffs, said she uses videos to supplement what students are learning, not to baby-sit a class.

In her British literature course, Howard shows three versions of "Hamlet," each 90 minutes long. She cuts into different acts with questions, asking students to compare the videos with each other. Howard estimates that about 10 percent of the class time during the school year is spent watching videos.

Shakespeare "ends up being a little dry on the page," she said. "Shakespeare is meant to be seen. If you can help spark it to life with a video, it helps kids absorb it better."

Juniors in a U.S. history class at North Platte High School typically watch about 18 hours of video during a semester, said Shirley Casper, chairwoman of the social studies department. The class meets 92 minutes a day as part of a block schedule that condenses a yearlong course into a semester.

The 18 hours of video-watching take up about 13 percent of the class time during the semester. The class tunes into a video an average of two to three times a week, Casper said. Students typically watch no more than 20 minutes in any given class period but sometimes watch as much as 45 minutes, she said.

Casper said the videos supplement what the students are reading or learning in class. Quizzes and tests sometimes include material from a video.

Not every video shown to high school classes features a documentary or a literary classic. At Millard South last spring, for example, civics students spent several class periods watching "The American President."

Teachers said the movie did more than show a romance between a widowed president, played by actor Michael Douglas, and a Washington environmental lobbyist, portrayed by Annette Bening. Instead, they said, it was an entertaining and effective way to teach students 
about lobbyists, special interest groups and jobs in the federal government, such as the chief of staff and cabinet officers.

Students paid more attention to the film's depiction of those characters and retained as much information as they would have from a lecture on the same topic, teachers said.

In another class at Millard South last spring, a 
substitute teacher in a world geography class popped in a CNN video. A feature on the high value of old movie posters followed a segment on fighting in Yugoslavia.

English classes are among those where videos are used most often. Two of the top videos requested from the Omaha School District's central video library are "Edgar Allan Poe: Terror of the Soul" and "Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe."

Last week at Grand Island Senior High, senior Kellie Penrose finished watching "Hamlet" for three class periods. She said the video helped her understand the story line.

" 'Hamlet' was hard," she said. "But to watch the video brought the book to life."

She has watched her share of irrelevant, outdated and boring videos, she said. For a couple of class periods of an economics course, she watched a dull video that looked as if it had been made in the 1970s.

"I couldn't even tell you what the content was because I didn't pay attention," she said.
At Omaha Burke High, students in Joan Hobart's advanced English class for seniors typically watch two to three hours of video during the semester, or about 4 percent of class time.

Students in the senior English class a might watch a portion of "Hamlet," for example, or maybe some of "The Story of English," a PBS documentary on the formation of the English language.

In a typical sophomore English class, Hobart said, students watch about six hours of videos during a semester, or about 9 percent of class time. The sophomores might watch a documentary about Mount Everest to supplement the book "Into Thin Air," which details an Everest expedition.

In both classes, students usually watch no more than 10 or 20 minutes at a time, said Hobart, who also is the English department chairwoman.

Hobart said the sophomores watch more hours of video than the seniors in the advanced class because sophomores' reading skills aren't as strong. In addition, she said, the senior course includes more poetry, which doesn't lend itself to videos.

Hobart said videos aren't used as a crutch, but rather as a way help students better understand what they've read.

"You try every device you can get your hands on to get students interested," she said. "The videos are another way to reach them."

Piller said that videos can be used effectively to enhance learning but that schools need to make sure they also are diagnosing and correcting reading problems.

Hobart said students watch videos only after they have read the portion of the book depicted in the tape.

The number of videos available to teachers and the range of topics has grown during the 1990s.

Video titles numbering 136,000 - one-third more than 10 years ago - are listed on the Internet site of the New Mexico-based National Information Center of Educational Media. Schools and teachers use the site to order videos.

"People think the computer is becoming the dominant instructional tool, but videos are still widely used," said Roy Morgan, the organization's executive director.

Viewing equipment also is more commonly available. At North Platte High, for example, most English, social studies, science and art classrooms are equipped with VCRs and televisions, said Patty Birch, the school's library media specialist.

That wasn't the case 10 years ago, she said. Birch said her school also has more videos, about 300, at least double the number 10 years ago.

Videos aren't the only tool teachers have, but they are useful, said Casper, head of North Platte High's social studies department.

"It helps some kids to see and hear something," she said. "I think there are definitely more visual learners today. They are children of the television era."

World-Herald staff writer Paul Goodsell contributed to this report.

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