The Teacher You've Never Met: Inside an Online High School Class

Teacher Jane Good hurries around kitchen a recent morning in her Denver suburb, preparing breakfast what will serve as her work attire for day: black exercise pants, a black, long-sleeved running shirt and white slipper booties.
"This is of the perks of being an online teacher," Good says she flips a fried egg and removes quinoa and poblano peppers the microwave.
Good, 46, is one of 11 full-time teachers Colorado's three-year-old 21st Virtual Academy, an online school about 750 students that is of the state's largest school district, the JeffCo Public Schools. She teaches a mix of full-time and part-time students in seventh- and eighth-grade science, ninth-grade Earth science 10th-grade biology — all from the comfort of home office, which has stunning views the Rockies.
Good around $63,000 a year, the same amount she'd earn a brick-and-mortar school in her district.

Scant research exists the effectiveness of full-time online learning, but 30 states allow K-12 students learn entirely online from teachers like Good, has about 125 students, some 50 of are full-time. Across the country, more two million K-12 students participate some form of online education, and nearly 300,000 do full time, according to John Watson, founder the Evergreen Education Group, a consulting firm in Durango, Colo.

Online education has origins in a movement in late 1990s to bring specialized and Advanced Placement classes to rural areas districts couldn't otherwise provide them. Since , shrinking school budgets have opened the door to companies offer a range of online alternatives special-needs students and parents dissatisfied available options. Steady growth meant there's a pressing need virtual teachers, some of whom never foot in a classroom.

They are new breed, these teachers who work remotely, and face an array of challenges, tracking down students they can't see. On a recent weekday, Good tried connect with roughly a fifth of her students , more than a week into the spring semester, had to log on for her class. Good has never met most of them and likely will.

little after 9:00 a.m., Xavier Long, a student in Good's ninth-grade Earth science class, calls.

Xavier, who's never taken online course before, is confused. Good goes the assignments for week, explains how to submit work and then guides Xavier downloading a plug-in tool that takes screenshots of his desktop and documents his work.
Good time in the same day to reach to over 20 students and almost a dozen parents. She spends half-hour helping a father who's having difficulty helping his son access Blackboard, learning management software used by 21st Century Virtual Academy.

"Parents are much involved in some ways online," Good says. "They are literally my classroom if they want to be, which creates a lot of that 'Why did you do this this way?'"

The 21st Century Virtual Academy, run by the suburban JeffCo district of about 86,000 students, is Good's second foray online teaching. After a decade in the classroom a high-school science teacher, she took a job in 2003 at Colorado Virtual Academy (COVA), a nonprofit cyber charter school managed by K12 Inc., a Virginia-based for-profit company that is largest operator of online schools in the United States.

She hoped the move would allow to spend more time home with her children, Keegan, now 17, and Delaney, 12.

Most of COVA's training for virtual teachers focused how to keep students enrolled rather on how to teach them. Good left after two years. "I didn't feel like a teacher," she says. "I was basically a data-entry person."

COVA's head of school, Heidi Heineke-Magri, says role of online teachers has evolved since Good's experience, and teachers now spend a lot more time instruction, along preparing lessons, grading work and speaking students and parents.

Good found back in a classroom again after her COVA experience, teaching science at-risk high-school students. But after budget cuts eliminated her position, she moved back online to her current job the JeffCo Virtual Academy and found herself facing another steep learning curve.

"I was tears every day at the beginning because I didn't have all training," Good says, articulating a common problem virtual teachers. Only 25 percent of teachers nationwide who were surveyed for "Going Virtual! 2010," a study by researchers at Boise State University, said they received training geared specifically online instruction before beginning their work.

Over her three years at the JeffCo Virtual Academy, Good received training and grown much more comfortable teaching online. Monthly professional development meetings, combined learning from experience, have helped her better guide students and use technology support them.


Adapted and abridged from: Time World, June 13, 2012.