Connections Academy Blog, Virtual Learning Connections

It doesn’t seem fair, but just as kids are learning to cope with the tremendous emotional and physical upheavals of early adolescence, along comes middle school with ramped-up expectations for both performance and individual responsibility. As parent and Learning Coach, you should prepare to be supportive during what can be the most rapidly changing period of a child’s life. Here are some tips and strategies for helping your son or daughter through the transition.

Prepare your student for multiple teachers.
Just like in a traditional school, your virtual school student will have a different teacher for each subject in an online middle school. In addition, your child may have an advisory teacher who will help with setting goals and measuring overall performance.

• Explain to your child that each teacher specializes in one subject and will have his or her own teaching style and expectations. 
• Make sure your middle schooler understands that the rules and grading criteria may be different for each course. 
• Talk to your child about managing multiple or conflicting priorities—and encourage him or her to turn to you for advice as soon as any situations arise.

Expect to communicate differently with teachers.
During this period, the responsibility for communication begins to shift from teachers to students. To help support your child’s transition to becoming an independent learner, you should encourage your middle schooler to call or send a message to the appropriate teacher when he or she has a question, needs assistance, or wants to share ...

While teenagers often think they are invincible, they still need some coaching to adapt successfully to the changes they’ll face in high school. Although virtual school students can escape much of the teenage angst and drama endured by their bricks-and-mortar counterparts, they will still encounter many new experiences. The following suggestions should help you and your teen get a strong start as he or she transitions to online high school.

Prepare your student for raised academic expectations.
High school classes are geared toward preparing students for college or the workplace, aka “the real world,” so the demands increase significantly. Virtual school students should be ready to encounter:

• a more rigorous curriculum
• a higher volume of coursework, including more reading, more writing, and more frequent assignments
• more time spent online
• even higher expectations for Honors or Advanced Placement courses

Discuss your teenager’s duties as an online high school student.
During the high school years, many responsibilities shift from the Learning Coach to the student. Make your teen aware that while you are always available for support, he or she is responsible for:

• initiating contact with teachers when help is needed 
• taking responsibility for his or her learning 
• working independently 
• being resourceful in finding solutions

Shift responsibilities for organizing and planning.
Hand over your crown as the “Calendar Queen” (or King) and let your high schooler manage his or her own schedule, with only occasional gentle reminders. Your teen should also be ready to take charge of the filing ...

What’s it really like to juggle parenting and be a Learning Coach for your child’s online schooling? What does the role of Learning Coach involve? Are virtual school students and Learning Coaches required to interact all day long, every day? If you’re thinking about online school for your kids, it’s important to learn the answer to these questions and grasp the big picture of how virtual school works with regard to your child’s responsibilities and the duties you’ll be performing as the Learning Coach. You’ll especially want to understand how these roles will change as your child grows up (which sometimes happens more quickly than we’d like!).

Online Elementary School: Children in Motion

As a parent, you already know that in elementary school busy little bodies need ongoing supervision! At this stage, attention spans are as tiny as the children themselves. Learning Coaches will need to help kids stay on task by minimizing distractions and by setting a schedule with varied activities and breaks. Remember, kids need exercise and playtime every day to burn off their excess energy!

Online school students in grades K–5 will have a very flexible schedule and do a large percentage of their schoolwork offline, including reading books, writing, and doing hands-on assignments. As a Learning Coach, you should expect to spend about five hours each day supervising these learning activities.

To support a child’s learning, a Learning Coach’s role includes demonstrating positive organization and good study skills, and providing assistance with time and ...

Kids may not listen to what you say, but they almost always notice what you do! If your family’s lifestyle shows a commitment to the importance of education, you can strongly influence how your child feels about school and learning. Here are a few suggestions for how you can lay a foundation for lifelong learning—online and offline:

• Incorporate family values. Try to tie your educational values  to family ones, so your child will see the two as linked. For example, make sure your child has the opportunity to see parents and other adults conduct research and read to learn something new. If education is important not just for school but also for the everyday lives of people in your family, it strengthens the desire to learn.


• Relate it to the real world. One of the best ways to get your child engaged in a lesson is to show him or her how to use the concepts/skills in real life. Having a context for what is being learned is the perfect way to show children why it’s important to advance their education.


• Encourage questions. The more questions your child asks, the more invested he or she is in the material being learned. Don’t forget that you can use questions to generate conversation, drive home an important point, or elaborate on a critical concept. Questions lead to discussion, and discussion leads to a richer overall understanding.


• Celebrate little victories. Your child’s earning a great score on a big exam isn’t the ...

Watching your child’s education develop before your eyes is a truly gratifying experience. Being able to witness the “aha!” moments when concepts are mastered and lessons completely understood is priceless for many parents.

But what about those times when your child isn’t able to grasp the material right away? When he or she stumbles through the lessons and can’t seem to complete the accompanying activities?

As a Learning Coach, you are not responsible for teaching lessons to your online school student, but rather for playing an active role in reinforcing study habits that lead to success. Since online teachers are there to determine your child’s needs, develop individualized learning plans, and handle the teaching, your role is to assist your student to become an independent online learner. Here are some important techniques to help foster effective learning:

1. Mastering the art of note-taking. Just because your student is taking notes during an online lesson doesn’t mean that he or she is doing so effectively. If you notice that your child is struggling to grasp the most important information, it may be time to work on note-taking strategies. Some of these include:
• previewing the readings
• paying attention to boldface words and headings
• reworking main ideas into concepts that are easily understood
• being attentive to captions
• using different modes of note-taking, including highlighters, sticky notes, index cards, graphs, charts, and diagrams
• making sure the notes taken answer/reference the objectives and questions that accompany each lesson
2. Providing a variety of learning materials. Your child ...

I just read a new study by Harvard Professor Nancy Hill concluding that parents’ helping children with their homework does not help them do well in school (article by Deborah Blagg, 2009). Wait a second, I thought, that is what good parents do! My wife and I take turns working with our three children on their homework because we assumed that our efforts would help them succeed in school and beyond. I guess if the world always worked as we expected, we wouldn’t need research.

So if “homework help” isn’t really helping, what should we be doing to ensure that our children are successful in school and in life? According to Professor Hill, volunteering (e.g., PTA, helping out in the classroom) helps a little, and educational activities (e.g., trips to the library or a museum) also can’t hurt, but what really can make a difference is our ability to connect children’s schoolwork to their life’s work. Hill writes, “Our study shows that helping children understand the value and utility of education correlates well with higher achievement levels in middle school and high school.” Children need to understand that mastering their times tables, reading Shakespeare, and learning the state capitals all have a connection to higher education, meaningful work, and ultimately a good life. If you can convince them of that, then they will get their homework done on their own—and you will just need to get out of the way.

So how do you do this? Hill’s analysis ...

Have you ever wondered what it's like to be a high school student in an online school?  The best way to find an answer is to go to the source.  Hannah Berquist has been kind enough to share her thoughts on the experience and a few of the surprises she had along the way!

Hannah Bergquist, MTS Minnesota Connections Academy High School Graduate 2010

Like many seniors across the state, I am celebrating the completion of high school and looking forward to beginning college next fall. However, my route to graduation was somewhat nonstandard. I completed my freshman year as a traditional high school student and to all outward appearances was very successful. I was involved in choir, made the junior varsity tennis team and doing well academically. Yet, over the course of the school year I had become increasingly frustrated with several things. First, despite having good grades, I all too often left my classes feeling confused about the homework making it difficult to complete. I often felt as if I was teaching the material to myself or relying on help from my parents. Second, the lack of discipline in all too many of my classrooms made it difficult to learn or enjoy the class time. Third, I was frustrated by not having as much free time as I would have liked in order to pursue other interests. This led to my decision to pursue other alternatives for completing my high school education

With help from my parents, I settled ...

Twelve-year old Koa Halpern, an online middle school student with Colorado Connections Academy, has a challenge for kids (and grown-ups) everywhere. Pledge not to eat fast food for 2 weeks!  Could it really be that simple to make a huge difference? Yes! 

The “Spring into Healthy Eating Challenge” that Koa posted on his Web site www.FastFoodFree.org, kicks off on Earth Day 2010, asking kids to sign a pledge to give up fast food for two weeks. His hope is that by giving up fast food for just two weeks, we can help keep hearts healthier, help the environment and keep extra pounds from developing on kids. If you are a busy virtual school or homeschool family, you may be wondering how to meet this challenge—don't fret, Koa offers some great tips! You can also find ideas for healthy meals on some of these other Virtual Learning Connections blog posts!

 “The mission of Fast Food Free is to reduce the consumption of fast food through education and community awareness, resulting in healthier people and a better world,” reads Koa’s Web site. “Fast Food Free is important to me because of the health risk fast food poses to people, animal rights violations, and the effects the fast food industry has on the environment. Personally, my number one concern is how the fast food industry impacts the world we live in. I don’t want kids growing up obese, I think it's awful for chickens to be packed in ...