As telecommuting becomes more acceptable in many professional industries, several public schools that want its graduates to be prepared for the workforce have begun to experiment with “work from home” days for its students, as reported by Benjamin Herold for Education Week.
Don’t mistake this phenomenon for an online school or homeschooling program. These are brick-and-mortar schools offering unique interactive activities for students to complete in home offices or at dining room tables, creating a purposeful blended learning environment that administrators hope may replicate “real world” working conditions after graduation.
Public high schools across the United States have started to experiment with work from home virtual learning days, from a Minnesota district’s “flexible learning days” to the Pascack Valley district’s “virtual school days.” These sporadic digital working environments have generally been successful, though not without their worries.
Herold reports that among the challenges that work from home initiatives face, concerns about a student’s potential to “goof off and watch cartoons” and the “stunning poor track record” of fully online classes were roadblocks to implementation. One physics teacher told Herold that she didn’t “think it’s a great idea,” adding that she prefers interacting face-to-face with students and gauging interest “based on what they’re discovering” in the physical classroom.
Other faculty members embrace the program, reporting that shy students seem to find their voices when allowed to communicate online rather than in “public.” Visual learner Alli Uhl told Herold that she enjoyed the class’s discussion via Twitter, saying that “I can see what other people are thinking and I can see their responses. [...] I do a lot better when it’s all in front of me.”
Education Week’s focus on public school initiatives is not to say that private-independent schools aren’t investing in technology-driven learning strategies.
Consider blended learning-based private schools like the AltSchool, which was founded in 2012 and will be expanding to a Chicago campus later in 2016. Its mission focuses on “exceptional, personalized education” for lower and middle school students, achieving this goal through a combination of guided instruction in a “traditional” school format and “innovative tools” that personalize lessons based on “deep research.”
Such examples can make the dream of individualized learning for its students seem like a dream only achievable for the schools with nearly limitless resources, including former Google engineers and Facebook investors. However, with successful public school examples like those found by Herold and Education Week, blended learning becomes an accessible pedagogical tool for private schools looking to upgrade their academic programming.
If your school wants to pursue a part-time “work from home” model, Herold rounded up these tips to ensure a smooth integration with your current academic strategies :
- Limit the number of different learning management systems (LMS) that your teachers and students need to access and use. Too many will create a logistical nightmare for everyone, killing the initiative before it has a chance to flourish.
- Students, according to interviewed administrators, “respond best to synchronous lessons that allow for real-time communication and interaction” like social media conversations within the industry and “collaborative writing and editing.”
- Take the time to teach your teachers! Introduce not only the software that your school has chosen to use for its work from home program, but also best practices to your teachers. Use a few early adopters to iron out potential wrinkles before rolling out the system to your entire faculty and school.
- Remember your parents and the broader community, who may be nervous about such a program. Explain to them both “what you’re doing and why you’re doing it.”
Additional ISM resources:
The Source for Division Heads Vol. 12 No. 6 20 Free Online Resources for School Administrators
The Source for Private School News Vol. 13 No. 10 School Spotlight: St. Margaret's Lives its Mission Through edX MOOCs
Additional ISM resources for Gold Consortium members:
I&P Vol. 35 No. 3 The 21st Century School: Curriculum and Technology
I&P Vol. 39 No. 12 The Rhetoric of Rigor
