What I Learned Asking Kids For Feedback On My Homeschool Educational Videos
Last Tuesday, I was wiping peanut butter granola crumbs off the kitchen counter after homeschool co-op when I heard my 10-year-old, Jax, and his friend Leo snickering at my laptop. They were scrolling through the Google Drive folder where I store the math and science videos I make for kids who can’t make in-person co-op classes, and Leo had paused one about slope-intercept form. “Why do you say ‘does that make sense’ after every single step?” he asked, turning the screen to me. “It’s like, every 30 seconds. I start counting how many times you’ll say it instead of paying attention to the math.”
I froze. I’d spent hours that weekend editing that video, drawing graphs on my scuffed old whiteboard, adding closed captions for the hard of hearing kid in our group, double-checking that all the problems matched the co-op’s curriculum. I’d asked the other co-op teachers to review it for content accuracy, and they’d said it was great. I never thought to ask a kid what they thought of watching it.
I pulled out a chair and sat down, told them to keep going—what else bugs you about the videos? No holding back, I won’t be mad. Jax jumped right in: “You leave the camera on the blank board when you’re writing the problem. Last week I waited 22 seconds for you to finish writing a long chemistry equation, so I opened TikTok and forgot to come back.” Leo added that the 30-second intro I do every time, where I say hi and mention my cat Mochi napping on the couch, is cute once but annoying when you’re trying to cram three videos before a quiz. Then he said the thing that stuck with me: “All your problems work out perfectly the first time. I never get problems right the first time, so when I mess up I think I’m doing something totally wrong, not just the same thing everyone does.”
I’d heard that from a parent the month before—one emailed me saying her 7th grader watched two of my videos then quit, said they were harder to follow than the textbook. I’d assumed it was just a focus issue, that kids these days can’t pay attention for 10 minutes. Turns out it wasn’t his focus. It was my videos.
I’ve been making these videos for two years, and I always asked for feedback from other adults: other teachers, co-op parents who use them with their kids. I never thought to ask the kids themselves, the people who actually sit down and watch them. I’d bought into the idea that good educational content has to be polished, professional, adult-approved. But what adults think is good doesn’t always line up with what kids actually learn from.
After that Tuesday, I made a few small changes, nothing fancy that took a lot of extra time. First, I edited all the existing videos to cut out the dead air when I’m writing—now it jumps straight from me saying the problem to the finished written step on the board, that took maybe an afternoon of clicking through clips. I added a line at the start of every new video that says “this works great at 1.5x or 2x speed if you want to speed it up”—I’d never even thought about that, because I watch videos at 1x speed, but all these kids are used to TikTok and YouTube Shorts at 1.5x, my steady teacher pace was glacial for them. I now only do the quick Mochi update on the first video of each month, cut it from every other video. And the biggest change: I start leaving one common mistake in each video, work through it, show how I catch it and fix it, instead of erasing it before I hit record.
I also added a 10-second closing to every new video that says “If something was confusing, text me what minute it was and I’ll fix it” and put my co-op cell number on the screen. It’s low effort for kids, no form to fill out, no email to write. Just a quick text.
Last week I got a text from an 8th grader that said “Minute 4, when you messed up the slope, that’s what I do every time. Thanks for leaving it in.” That’s the kind of feedback I never would have gotten from an adult parent, who wouldn’t notice that that’s what makes a video actually helpful.
For other parents or teachers who make educational videos, whether for your own kid at home, a homeschool group, or your classroom, this doesn’t require overhauling your process or buying fancy editing software. It’s just about asking the people who actually watch your videos what they think, and not getting defensive when they say things that feel silly or small. You don’t need a formal survey. Just grab two or three kids who will be honest with you, offer them a cookie, and ask them what makes you click away from a video, what’s hard to follow, what’s annoying.
Some of the feedback I’ve gotten doesn’t work for everyone—one kid said he likes the Mochi updates, because it makes the videos feel less like boring school work. So I keep the monthly one, that’s a compromise. I still say “does that make sense” way more than I should, even in new videos. I forget to cut the dead air sometimes, and I still get feedback that the blue marker I switched to is still too light for some screens.
I don’t think I’ll ever make a perfect educational video. Every kid learns differently, and watches content differently, so there’s no one right version. But asking for feedback from the people who actually use the videos has made them way more useful than any tip I ever got from a teaching workshop about content alignment or production quality. Right now, it’s working. I’m still learning, still editing, still adjusting when a kid texts me a one-minute complaint that makes the whole video better for everyone else.
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