So...What's Online School Like?

Lindsey and her dad configuring her new laptop for online school (Nov 2017).

When people hear that Lindsey is going to an online high school, their first question is invariably, "What's it like?"

It is really, really cool. And challenging. And not lonely.

From an academic standpoint, because there isn't class time where students are expected to work on practice examples or projects, there is a lot of written work. For all of her classes, Lindsey needs to turn in a portfolio of sample work, showing that she has grasped whatever concept is being taught, be it sample math problems, writing samples, a short essay proving understanding of a historical event.

She has lots of online quizzes, some only as much as 3 questions, to test students' understanding of a concept. She takes great satisfaction in taking those quizzes, clicking "Submit" and then seeing her score instantly. She can see which ones she got wrong and what the right answer would have been, which, of course, bothers her greatly so she always looks it up to see why she got it wrong.

She has live lessons, usually one or two per day, where she needs to be logged in at a specific time for a lesson. It works a lot like a webinar, where the teacher often has a presentation up on the screen, and all the students can respond via a live chat. The teacher will have her audio turned on and all the students muted. This is the most entertaining part of her education.

Lindsey usually loves these live lessons, because she enjoys the interaction between students and the teacher. After a lesson she'll say something like, "Ben interrupts a lot," or "Alison is really chatty, she is constantly talking." Some of the kids in the class are on Snapchat together, and they'll snap to each other during the class, which is the online equivalent of passing notes. Lindsey only knows this because they'll accidentally comment on the live lesson chat about what the other person sent them (the equivalent of dropping the note between desks).

For Spanish class, she has to record herself speaking Spanish vocabulary and submit that recording to the teacher and it is graded on her fluency. In the live lessons they spend time learning about the culture of various Hispanic countries. For one live lesson, the teacher did a live stream of herself making churros in her kitchen, and during the cooking lesson they talked about the cuisine of various countries. Lindsey was really craving a snack after that one.

During one memorable math lesson, the teacher had asked students what the next step was in solving a quadratic equation. Lindsey started typing, then backspaced, then started typing, backspaced, and so on. In the meantime, on the chat screen everyone can see "Lindsey is typing..." for a pretty long time. Finally the teacher said, "I get the impression Lindsey is trying to say something." Lindsey finally hit "enter" on her answer and posted it. She got a few LOLs from other classmates for that one.

Her school has tons of clubs, of which she's not yet gotten involved. They have debate, Photography Club (which she wants to join eventually), Science Club, Musical Club and many others. They have field trips that are all over the state, and the high schoolers have a prom in a city centrally located in the state. Lindsey is considering going.

How you often find Lindsey working: on the couch with the dog on her lap.

Here's the cool thing about this: I suspect that there are many special education students in her classes and they are no different from anyone else. I am seeing that most of the students in her school live in small towns in outstate Minnesota. I suspect these are students for which their local public high school could not make accommodations for them, and their next best solution was online school.

Students are not judged for their appearance or their fashion. If they have difficulty speaking no one knows it, and students are more than capable of expressing themselves through the typed word. No one needs special accommodations for equipment, wheelchairs, tube feedings, etc. because those things happen off line. I can imagine that for some kids, an online education is ideal.

Lindsey is staying connected to her friends from Minneapolis schools on weekends, meeting for lunches and coffees, going to movies together and hanging out. Through her friends we are learning of more budget cuts at the public school, messy class schedules and overcrowded classrooms. It makes me sad to hear of the state of our local high school. I know we made the right decision to search out another education option for her.