A tribute to education

I'll just flat out say it: I'm proud to be a teacher. I love working with students and helping them achieve their potential. I'm a strong believer in the power of education. Where would we be without it? Recently, my grandmother passed away. She was born in 1920, and became a nurse in the 1940's. She chose to make nursing a profession even after she was married and was raising a family. Education was key to her success. Her early education built the foundation she needed to be successful in high school. High school taught her more specialized instruction, but it also reinforced the benefits of hard work and dedication to one's goals. Grandma decided she wanted to graduate with as many credits as possible. She made it, graduating with 20 credits instead of the 16 required in her day. As she pursued her nursing degree, she worked long hours and for a time actually lived at the hospital, rotating between classes and intern shifts. Her hard work paid off when she graduated, leading to a distinguished career of serving patients and teaching others about nursing throughout her life.

This story of my grandma acts as a tribute to the benefits of education. Through her efforts, she was able to achieve her goal of becoming a nurse. Because of her efforts, she helped countless people throughout her career, both through the nature of her work and through the example that she set. My firm belief in the value of education can be traced to my Grandma, and other fine examples like her. I know as a teacher I have the ability to profoundly affect people's lives, which is a responsibility I do not take lightly. I am pursuing my administrative endorsement in an effort to help other teachers inspire their students in a similar way. Education is a gift we can earn that we are obligated to share. Thanks grandma.

Midterms and Parent Teacher Conferences

At UTVA, we work on a semester schedule. We're almost to midterms, which means it's almost time for our parent teacher conferences. These conferences are a little different, as you may imagine, since we don't have a physical classroom that parents can visit. The teachers of UTVA are not all lined up in the gym for a few hours, as is often the case in a traditional brick and mortar school. Instead, we arrange appointments with parents and their students to visit us in our online classroom. Once there, we visit about progress, go over missing work, sing praises of improvements, and make some goals for the remainder of the semester. It is a refreshing opportunity to discuss students individually and really help them make the most of their time in school.
Of course, there are frustrations. Not all parents are aware of their student's progress, even though they have access to grades 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In addition, at our school, students are 'going to school' at home, so parents have the opportunity (and I dare say, obligation) to check in with their student each day. Since students are not coming to a physical site for school, we at UTVA rely on parents to act as learning coaches for their students. Learning coaches are to mentor their student, act as a liaison for their student as needed, and act as a daily check point to make sure their student is progressing as expected. I'm really excited that this year we are doing more to support our learning coaches. Hopefully this effort will pay off in helping students achieve academic growth. It is from frustrations that new ideas are generated, and that ultimately leads to improvement.

Back to Basics

Our school is growing at an astounding rate. We started three years ago with less than 500 students, and this year our enrollment is 2,050. Incredible, by any standard. Our school has faced an interesting challenge to appropriately serve students by striving to keep up with demand. We hire new teachers, and find that even more are needed. In this growth process, teachers have been asked to take on new responsibilities and step up into leadership roles to help new staff as they come on board.

I find myself at a point this year where I need to refocus my efforts to the task at hand, which is helping students achieve success. In order to do this, I need to fulfill my duties as teacher and advisor while stepping up to support new teachers as they learn the ropes. By doing my best to maintain a positive outlook, I will be better able to accomplish these goals.

I know this post is a bit reflective, but most teachers will relate to the feeling of getting caught in the whirlwind of tasks. It's what happens. I'm learning with more and more certainty that it is the way in which we handle the tasks or manage the chaos that has the greatest effect on our success.

Educational Leadership

I've been thinking a lot lately about leadership in schools. For my other SUU class this semester, I've been assigned to write my philosphy of educational leadership. It's easy to look at the principals and leaders we see in our school communities and notice similar qualities in effective leaders. They're knowledgeable of the rules and regulations that govern their school. They're adept at building positive relationships with students, teachers, and community. Above all, they care about the success of students in their school. The more I think about it and study the topic, however, the more I come to realize that maybe one of the most important qualities a leader can possess (and possibly the most difficult to master) is the ability to look at a situation or issue within a school and apply the appropriate leadership and management skills to best fit that need.

How does this apply to an online school? In my online high school, we rely on leaders who can help keep our faculty focused on the goal of helping students succeed and improve. It goes beyond simply cheerleading or leading from an 'ivory tower'- our leaders can and should help us to develop the necessary strategies to achieve our goals. Collaboration and teamwork are essential to our success. In an online school, just like any other school, communication is key. We rely on feedback from students and parents to know how we're doing, and what areas of instruction are in need of improvement. An effective administrator can help teachers to collect and analyze that feedback and create a plan to make the necessary adjustments.

To sum up, a truly effective leader in education could be effective no matter what the setting. This is not because the leader is perfect or has all the answers, although that would be nice. It is because the leader has taken the time to learn how to apply the appropriate skills needed to best fit their environment.

What's the difference?

Picture this...you're in your traditional high school setting, standing in front of a class full of students. As you look them over, you start to make initial "evaluations" of them as students. Which ones are sleepy? Who didn't eat breakfast? Who are the dedicated students with the drive to excel? Who are your students with behavior issues? How are you going to manage this group? The experienced educators reading this post are probably already forming a plan for classroom management even with such limited information. How will you transfer those skills to a virtual classroom? You can't see your students to know whether or not they're awake, healthy, or well fed. You can't point out the students with behavior issues because you don't see them acting out.

The truth is, there is some give and take to a virtual classroom. Sure, you don't see the students each day for that face to face connection. However, classroom management in a virtual class is easy - if there's too much talking, just take away chat privileges. Teaching in a virtual setting requires engaging students through different means, but the advantage is that teachers are already using a forum that almost all students relate to - the internet. Teachers aren't faced with lunchroom duty or dress codes in a virtual school, which provides additional time for a personal communication or a quick tutoring session with a struggling student. As you can see, the positive side of virtual education makes it a credible option for many students and teachers.

I often get the comment (often from my own children), "Don't you wish you could be a real teacher again?" I just laugh and tell them that I am a real teacher - I just teach in my slippers. Virtual education is real and it works. It's different, but in this case, different is good for a lot of students.

Starting Out

It's a new school year, and with it comes new exciting opportunities and challenges. This is my third year teaching with the Utah Virtual Academy, Utah's largest online charter school. UTVA serves students K-12 throughout the state. I teach English for the High School, and this year I've been given the opportunity to work as the 11th grade advisor. Our school has approximately 2,000 students, and over 500 of those are high school students. Working in a virtual environment has some major advantages as well as some substantial obstacles. That's part of the appeal, in my opinion.

In addition to starting a new year at a rapidly growing school, I've begun working on my master's degree with Southern Utah University. I am really excited about their Educational Administration program, as much of it is available online (an environment in which I have become very comfortable). It is another 'thing' to juggle into my schedule, but I relish the opportunity for a few reasons. First, I am a firm believer in continually improving myself. Furthering my education is a great way to accomplish that goal. Second, it is so healthy for me to refresh my experience as an online student. It allows me to put myself in my students' shoes. Being involved in an online class takes a good amount of self discipline and motivation. It forces students to seek help in alternative means (email, phone, skype, instead of just raising a hand). Students rely on clearly communicated expectations, assignments, and deadlines, as well. Patience and creativity are keys to success as new and unexpected challenges arise.

For now, my purpose in writing is to provide observations as a virtual teacher and a virtual student. Even though I've been involved in virtual education for only a few years, I firmly believe that this is the way education is headed. Perhaps this blog will be of interest to other teachers, but if not, at least it will be of value to me as I try to make sense of both of my roles in the virtual world.