Remote Learning’s Essential Questions
The experiences of an established virtual school point to the guideposts for student-teacher relations, use of time, supervision and consistent practices
BY STEPHEN A. KOSSAKOSKI AND ALEXANDRA ENAYAT/School Administrator, February 2021

Steve Kossakoski has managed explosive growth in the past year at New Hampshire’s Virtual Learning Academy. PHOTO COURTESY OF VIRTUAL LEARNING ACADEMY CHARTER SCHOOL, EXETER, N.H.

During the 2019-20 school year, the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School served more than 12,500 students, and we are on course to double the enrollment this year to meet the needs of students and schools during the coronavirus pandemic.

With most school districts in New Hampshire, where we’re based, operating with remote instruction during the past fall, the demand has been intense for virtual placements in the elementary grades and subject courses on the secondary level. We’ve worked diligently to add instructors and new sections of high-demand classes during this uncertain time. By mid-December, we had created open seats in a large percentage of the school’s 230 high school and 37 middle school courses, as well as elementary subject slots.

To meet the demands of the fall’s unprecedented enrollment surge, our school hired two full-time school counselors and 125 new instructors and extended our searches nationally in anticipation of hiring another 50 instructors to meet the needs.

During our 12-year history, we have developed a skill set and knowledge base for working with teachers and learners in remote settings that could be helpful to school administrators who are faced with the reality of implementing remote learning programs from scratch. Perhaps the best way to share what we know is by sharing the essential questions we asked ourselves as we built and expanded our school and now look forward to a post-pandemic future.

Strong Relations

One prevailing perception we hear is that online learning is a lonely endeavor where relationships rarely flourish. We have found that placing emphasis on building relationships among students, parents and teachers makes a big difference.

We train our teachers how to build student and parent connections and promote the tenets of excellent customer service. Every course at the Virtual Learning Academy begins with a teacher, parent and student meeting, what we describe as a welcome call. We view this as one of the most important tools to establish a strong relationship.

During these meetings, instructors share information, answer questions and get to know a bit about each student’s interests and goals. It’s vital that welcome calls are conducted using a video conferencing tool like Zoom to allow each party to see facial expressions, read body language and communicate enthusiasm or anxiety.

The 7/11 rule applies during these calls — people make 11 decisions during the first seven seconds of coming into contact with another — so it is crucial that staff members who interact with students and parents consider the quality of the images and audio they are sharing with participants.

Many of our adjunct instructors — who make up about 80 percent of the faculty — also work at brick-and-mortar schools. We of-ten hear them say the relationships with their online students are deeper than the relationships they have with their other students. While that doesn’t necessarily mean that online relationships are better, it does indicate that a powerful bond can be established through frequent one-on-one virtual conversations.

Creating and fostering a one-to-one relationship takes time and skill, but we believe the results justify the investment. As students work their way through a course, instructors will continue to communicate via video, and they may also use more traditional tools like e-mail, text messages and phone calls, as appropriate.

We often remind ourselves that video conferencing tools allow students to bring teachers into their homes where noisy siblings might be in the background or a pet may accompany a student to a meeting. Teachers can use these potential distractions as conversation starters. They can ask questions, not just relating to academics but also about their students’ interests and hobbies. The more teachers get to know their students, the more authentic the relationships become, and the easier it is for learning to occur.

We see three sets of essential questions guiding the development of relationships with students and parents.

No. 1: How do we balance the time required to develop strong relationships with the time needed for direct instruction? Have our teachers been trained to use digital tools that help build strong relationships? How often should teachers be in contact with students and with parents? Should we consider customer service training to build our skills and knowledge about building relationships in an online environment?

No. 2: What about building relationships between and among employees? Should we hold regular meetings via video conference? Should we schedule meetings to socialize? Can we create engaging channels in our chat tool (Slack, MS Team Meeting) where family photos can be shared or wellness activities can be planned?

No. 3: Do we have guidelines in place for personalizing our digital tools? For instance, most communication tools allow users to insert photos and add names, location and other information about the user. Should we create guidelines for configuring online profiles?

Time Management

Consider treating time as a variable, not as a constant. Online learning is flexible because it can happen anytime and anywhere. With this flexibility, students can learn at an accelerated pace or they can take more time to understand their course material depending on their individual needs. Think about harnessing this flexibility to allow students to master concepts or competencies at a pace that aligns with their academic needs.

What could this look like? A strong math student might finish Algebra I sooner and have the opportunity to begin studying geometry, while a struggling student finds success when given additional time to master difficult mathematical concepts.

Learning in a flexible environment for the first time can be difficult for some students. However, we approach this as an opportunity to develop independent learning skills. Developing such skills is necessary to the short-term and long-term success of all students, and like any classroom, the online learning environment can be structured to inhibit or foster the development of these skills. Our teachers assist students by scheduling goal-setting sessions, introducing the concept of pace charts and discussing time management techniques.

Regular check-ins take place to ensure that actions and goals are in alignment. The Virtual Learning Academy inserts pace charts in all courses with the expectation that every student and teacher will use them as a guide. Teachers anticipate challenges along the way and help their students reset their goals and update their pace charts.

We see three sets of essential questions about the use of time:

No. 1: Should we support synchronous learning only? Asynchronous only? A combination? Should students be allowed to progress at different rates? Do we know how many students are lagging behind or accelerating beyond their classmates?

No. 2: How do we measure time? Should we record attendance using the time stamps generated when students log in and log out of our learning management system or video conferencing application? Should we adopt a competency-based approach and substitute the mastery of competencies for seat time or attendance?

No. 3: How do we use time? Can the time to master standards or competencies be flexible? Should traditional academic calendars govern the rate at which students learn?

Consistent Practices

The transition to remote learning has created a great deal of uncertainty for students and families, and consistent practices will go a long way in reducing confusion and anxiety while building a new sense of normalcy. Additionally, implementing consistent procedures and using a standardized set of technology tools simplifies professional development requirements and reduces employees’ stress.

Three areas ought to be considered to address consistency: tools, communication and expectations.

Consider, for instance, that Jack Smith, a high school teacher, requires his students to use Zoom to attend synchronous classroom sessions, sends various resources and homework assignments to students through e-mail and shares course grades with students and parents through the district’s student information system. All feedback and communication with students and parents is conducted via e-mail.

Harriet Jones, another high school teacher, uses Google Hangouts for video conferencing, shares assignments and resources in Google Classroom and offers regular office hours where students can enter her Hangouts classroom to get help.

Viewed independently, each scenario may be workable, but from the student and parent perspective, it’s confusing and exhausting to learn how to use a variety of technology tools and to remember where to access information and remember the teacher’s preferred means of communication.

We see three sets of essential questions to guide consistent practice.

No. 1: Which technology tools should be used? Do we have a set of official tools that teachers should be using with students? Is there a procedure in place for identifying and approving new tools? Do we know which software tools are in use? Are they secure? How much student information is collected by the tools that are in use? Are the tools in compliance with your data safety and governance plan? Do the tools meet Web Content Accessibility Standards 2.0 AA guidelines? Have we provided instructors, students and parents with adequate training and support in the use of our approved tools?

No. 2: How do we communicate with students and parents? Have we identified our preferred communication tools? How often are we using e-mail? Are our communication tools in alignment with our goal of developing strong relationships with students and parents? When are chat tools used? Are chat channels open to all students? Is there a need to supervise chat channels where students are communicating? When using a video conferencing tool, are instructors required to turn on their cameras? Are there expectations regarding remote work environments? When using video conferencing tools, will students and parents hear background noise and be able to view a teacher’s surroundings?

No. 3: Do we have guidelines in place for distributing educational resources to students? For instance, do we expect teachers to use PDFs and MS Word-compatible document formats? How are we ensuring compliance with copyright laws? How quickly should e-mail and voice messages be returned? How quickly should student work be graded and feedback provided? Are there expectations regarding the tone of text and voice messages?

(We train staff to structure messages with an introductory compliment, a second segment where coaching occurs and a closing encouragement to students to continue their work.)

Supervision and Training

Educators not only face teaching in a new environment but also are likely to be working remotely for the first time. We realized over time that aligning our supervisory and professional development efforts was necessary to best support our teachers. We combined training and supervisory duties and created our instructional support team, whose sole purpose is to help instructors.

The instructional support team is composed of administrators who have both traditional classroom experience and extensive time as online instructors. They participate in hiring, conduct regular “walkthroughs” and monitor data to ensure instructors meet instructional standards. These support team members also gather feedback from instructors to inform our professional development work, which they design and implement.

Supervisory practices take on different forms in the digital space. Staff should know when, where and how they can communicate with school administrators. Holding regular staff meetings using video conferences is an excellent time to address concerns and answer questions as a team.

During these meetings, school leadership could share data regarding calls or e-mails and make this information available to teachers to reflect on the results. 

You could administer student and parent surveys to solicit feedback and discuss findings during staff meetings. You also might plan to meet one-on-one with staff members on a monthly or bi-monthly basis to ensure they feel prepared and supported during this time.

Over time, we identified data fields yielding valuable insights into staff performance that can flag needs for additional training or direct support. For example, teachers and their supervisors monitor each student’s progress status (on pace or behind pace to meet goals), the use of video conferencing with students, text-based message tone and content and feedback/corrections of student work.

Instructors and supervisors also monitor student and parent feedback collected through an end-of-course survey. These surveys are designed to elicit feedback on curriculum quality, interactions with support staff and quality of the student’s or parent’s interactions with the teacher.

An array of professional development offerings support certified employees. The school employee intranet site carries links to asynchronous video and text-based resources to help employees meet their professional and schoolwide goals. Teachers and supervisors also collaborate on the development of customized professional development activities that typically are synchronous and include work with a trained mentor. The Virtual Learning Academy also sponsors an annual two-day, face-to-face conference in early August.

One of our long-running professional development activities, the Essential Friends Group, is influenced by work of the School Reform Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating transformational learning communities. The Essential Friends Group provides educators with an opportunity to learn from one another in a safe and collaborative setting. Almost every teacher has volunteered to participate in an EFG workgroup.

To facilitate our staff’s professional growth and build a supportive culture, we use an online application called Small Improvements that helps track growth and provides employees with an opportunity to offer encouragement to colleagues.

We see three sets of essential questions regarding supervision and professional development.

No. 1: How can we adapt our teacher supervisory model to work in a remote learning model? How do we change our supervisory model for support staff for remote workers? What types of data are generated by our digital tools that may assist supervisors?

No. 2: How do we create a culture of support in a world where online behaviors generate substantial data sets? Will the technology tools that we select allow us to share data with employees? How do we use data when supporting and supervising personnel? Can we create a culture where employees use data to support their growth?

No. 3: What does an integrated supervision and professional development program look like? Should we consider assigning both supervision and training duties to the same administrator or team? What types of instructor feedback or data will we need to determine where our professional development efforts should be focused? 

STEVE KOSSAKOSKI is chief executive officer of the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School in Exeter, N.H. Twitter: @VLACS. ALEXANDRA ENAYAT is a program specialist for communications at the school.