District leader insights: Dr. Angélica Ramsey

Dr. Angélica Ramsey has spent 25 years in classrooms and district leadership. She’s been a teacher, curriculum director, deputy superintendent, superintendent, and chief academic officer. She has sat in board meetings where technology policy is decided, and in PLCs where teachers figured out how to work around it. She knows both perspectives and she starts with something every administrator knows but rarely says out loud:

In 25 years, I’ve never found an instructional material adoption that actually meets every standard that you need to teach. So you have to supplement.

That gap has always existed. The real question is whether a district has any control over how it gets filled.

When YouTube was open, teachers used it to fill the gap and it worked. But, it also created problems. Students found ways around restrictions, inappropriate videos appeared, and ads interrupted lessons. The ban was a response to those issues, but it didn’t address the core problem.

Take a teacher far from the ocean, teaching a lesson that includes Jacques Cousteau. The textbook has an illustration, but the students have never seen the ocean themselves. The textbook image alone does not help them build a clear picture, but a short video does.

Insert thirty seconds of a whale watch, a few clips from different locations so students see a range of whale species, and then a short segment about Cousteau to bring the topic to life. Now when students read about him, he feels real.

Now you have the students hooked. Their engagement then leads to them having motivation to read and comprehend and want to learn more. You’ve just brought in science, and oceanography, everything else that you cannot do if you just take the reading.

Then there’s a detail that often gets missed. “Which, by the way, [the reading] is usually on a smart board. So there’s already technology.” The ban didn’t remove technology from the lesson. It removed the supplement that was working to make the lesson land. Most YouTube bans are framed as a way to reduce screen time, but many of the same districts still require daily time on intervention software for each student. If screen time were the main concern, those tools would also be a concern.

What is really driving the decision is controlled access. And that calls for a different solution.

In Pleasant Valley, Dr. Ramsey’s board struggled to engage with a governance concept through documents alone. When she created a short video, they understood it right away.

If I ask you about a book you read in seventh grade, you’re not going to remember. But if I ask you about the first time they wheeled in the TV, and what you watched, you remember the images and lesson – and that’s why we need to provide that as an instructional tool for our students.

Which brings her back to the actual question administrators should be asking.

So is the reason you’re doing it because it’s unsafe? Great – I have a way where you can continue providing that instructional tool to students and teachers, but in a way that’s safe, in a closed system, where you’re not exposed to content that has no place in a classroom.

The answer is not less video. It is video that fits within a clear structure. Something a teacher can explain, a principal can support, and a superintendent can stand behind. It is chosen for a purpose, tied to a standard, and part of a larger lesson. No core adoption has ever covered everything and it never will.

The question is what fills that gap, and whether the solution is something the district can stand behind or something happening quietly on the side.

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About Dr. Angélica Ramsey