Posted on April 12, 2022October 12, 2023 by

April 12, 2022 9:30 am

Beyond the Screen

In an increasingly virtual world, online instructors find ways to establish deep connections with students as they support them in reaching their goals.

A first grader tells the class about a tooth that she not only lost but swallowed; a fifth grader blossoms when she’s encouraged to incorporate her artwork in her assignments; with some extra help, a second grader progresses from reading below to reading at grade level — all with the support of a teacher whom they’ve never met in person. Online instruction might sound impersonal, but Imagine Learning Instructional Services’ virtual instructors create connections through special moments just like a teacher would in a physical classroom. As Tracy Regula, an elementary instructional supervisor, puts it, “the bonds [between teacher and student] go beyond the screen.”

“I am motivated to be a person that is… a safe place and a loving place where they feel comfortable and confident… exploring, learning new things, and trying things that are hard.”

Erin Schwab, Virtual Instructor

These special bonds are what keep our virtual teachers logging in day after day. “Not all days are easy… and all teachers know that, whether you’re brick and mortar or virtual,” but K–5 teacher, Erin Schwab is motivated to “be a person that is… a safe place and a loving place where they feel comfortable and confident… exploring, learning new things, and trying things that are hard.” Fellow K–5 teacher, Diamond Singh loves watching her students learn and is energized by the “ah-ha” moments when she can visibly see “the moment when they get it.”

Lightbulb moments like these are part of multiple-subject teacher, Kathryn DeGioia’s “why” — the reason she became an educator. She also acknowledges the impact her own teachers had on her and wants to “pay it forward” by getting her students excited about learning. Being inspired by teachers seems to be a common thread among current educators, as secondary Spanish teacher, Debra Allison comments, “I want to empower my students. I want to give them all those great feels that I received when I was a student.”

While a lot of teachers are inspired by educators from their past, there are also plenty of less traditional routes to the career. Tracy struggled in school, but it was watching her daughter experience similar difficulties that inspired her to look for a way to help “students learn to their fullest ability.” Secondary science teacher, Dr. Kettyah Chhak had maybe an even less traditional path, starting as a scientific researcher. She responded to a need for math and science teachers, thinking it would be nice to try something different for a couple years. But after a year of teaching, she was “hooked.”

This variety of backgrounds is so valuable, especially because of the varied reasons why students pursue an education online. From student-athletes to those who have a medical need to those who need to make up credits for graduation, virtual instruction allows students to achieve all their goals. “Our students just have such a wide variety of backgrounds and reasons why they’re doing online,” remarks Kettyah, “so I try not to make any assumptions ever… I find I learn so much more about my students that way.”

“It awakened me as a person, [thinking] ‘Who are these students and why are they using this platform? And how can I help them?’ All of that is just so invigorating.’”

Debra Allison, Virtual Instructor

Debra sees the diversity as a welcome challenge: “I mean, yes, I teach Spanish, [but] I can really be teaching anything — I’m really teaching the students… Here at Imagine Learning our students are so varied. It awakened me as a person, [thinking] ‘Who are these students and why are they using this platform? And how can I help them?’ All of that is just so invigorating.

Heterogeneity is definitely not exclusive to the virtual classroom, nor are the tasks that make up a virtual instructor’s daily to-do list: responding to emails, meeting with students, grading, grading, and more grading. What is unique to the virtual classroom is the flexibility for both student and teacher. The varied reasons for choosing to learn virtually often come down to a need for school to adapt to their schedule, not the other way around. While this adaptability is convenient for students, it becomes powerful for teachers, as they have the ability to rearrange their day to focus on the students who need extra support at that moment. Debra finds that she is able to be the best teacher for each of her students because she can focus her time “where it really matters most.”

The ability to focus on the individual student is why, though it might seem unlikely, the student-teacher relationship can still flourish in a virtual environment. Tracy said that this was one of her worries when transitioning to teaching virtually, if she would be able to create the same type of bonds with her students that she did face to face. What she found, actually, is that it is possible and “those bonds might even be a little bit stronger” than when she was teaching in person. She credits this to the focus she can give to individuals. While she was able to meet with students one-on-one when teaching in person, Tracy remarks that she was always keeping one eye on the rest of her class. But “you don’t have to do that in the virtual world. And so, you’re really able to give them all of you, instead of part of you.”

Meet the Educators

Dr. Kettyah Chhak

Kathryn DeGioia

Tracy Regula

Diamond Singh

One of the tell-tale signs of a meaningful teacher-student connection is when former students drop by to visit their past teachers. These visits reinforce the bond and also let teachers see the fruits of their labor as they learn how their student is continuing to thrive as they move through school and life. These drop-ins may seem impossible in the virtual classroom, but Kathryn says that’s not actually the case. She has a student who is no longer in her class who “periodically emails [her saying], ‘How are you?’ and ‘I miss you’ and ‘Thank you so much for all your help, last year. I don’t think I would have passed fourth grade last year if you hadn’t helped me.’ and it’s just sweet. In a brick-and-mortar school, these would be the students who stopped in your classroom.”

In both the physical and virtual worlds, it is all about our connections with others. The bond a student feels with their teacher can be the difference that inspires them to succeed — and for our virtual teachers, these bonds extend far beyond the computer screen.

Nine Tips for Success with Virtual Learning

Whether you are new to the virtual classroom or an experienced online teacher, here are a few tips for success with virtual learning.

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Posted on January 1, 2022October 13, 2023 by

January 1, 2022 8:00 am

Share Your Imagine Learning Breakthrough

Let’s celebrate students’ aha moments! Enter to win #ImagineLearningBreakthrough Moment of the Month and a $50 prize. Whether it’s a big discovery in class or small assignment at home — every achievement counts.

Imagine Learning is a leading provider of K–12 learning solutions, bringing together our adaptive and core programs, assessment tools, credit recovery, and more to provide opportunities that ignite learning breakthroughs in every student’s journey. Everything we do is deeply rooted in our relationships with educators: We can support and achieve greater learning by working together.

That’s why we want to hear about students’ “aha” moments! Whether it was a notable discovery in the classroom or while working through an assignment at home, every achievement counts! It could be as simple as:

Solving for X in a math equation
Understanding a passage in a story
Speaking a new language
Grasping a complex topic

three girls sitting on a log holding their raised hands

Imagine Learning Breakthrough Moment of the Month

Enter to win a $50 e-gift card

Educators, students, and families can post a short video on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter demonstrating a moment of discovery. Use #imaginelearningbreakthrough in your post, and your video could be named the Imagine Learning Breakthrough Moment of the Month.

Each month, ten videos will be awarded a $50 e-gift card for sharing their “aha” moment! We can’t wait to see how you ignite learning in your schools!

View official contest flyer and contest details.

Enter to win.

Post on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter and use #imaginelearningbreakthrough to share your story.

Share My Moment

Posted on June 30, 2021October 13, 2023 by

June 30, 2021 8:00 am

Engaging Families in Math Learning

Family members are important partners in student learning, but how do we best to engage them in the learning process? Imagine Learning undertook a two-year-long research study, and these are the results.

Educators know that parents and family members are important partners in student learning, but some may not be aware of how best to engage family members in the learning process.

To help answer this question, Imagine Learning undertook a two-year-long research study, specifically around middle-years mathematics learning with a focus on third-grade students and their families.

At the outset of this study, Imagine Learning positioned family engagement in math learning as a design challenge, not a social problem. Imagine Learning did not want to perpetuate the idea that family engagement with low-income, Black, and Latino families is a social problem, meaning the problem resides within families and needs to be solved. Instead, the work was framed with an asset-based lens, which acknowledges that family members want to and do support their children in learning mathematics.

To partner and collaborate with family members to increase student academic achievement, it is essential for educators to support families and, most importantly, know how to recognize, honor, and acknowledge all efforts made by family members throughout the learning process. This is particularly important with low-income, Black, and Latino families, whose efforts supporting their students have commonly been unacknowledged or leveraged in mathematics.

By redefining family engagement and partnership as a design challenge, a pivotal change happens, in which family members — specifically those from low-income, Black, and Latino families — are properly seen and recognized as a child’s greatest asset in the learning process.

Our recent white paper describes the lessons learned from this study, which educators everywhere can use to further engage families as collaborators and partners in all learning, but particularly in math learning.

Here, we’ll share the research study’s five key lessons — “Lessons to Design By” — that may help other educators develop or further enhance approaches for increasing family engagement in mathematics, building stronger community relations, and accelerating academic achievement for students.

parent congratulates child with a high-five

Key Lessons and Takeaways for Engaging Family Members as Partners and Collaborators

As a result of this study, Imagine Learning determined five key lessons related to the importance of communication, establishing trusting relationships between schools and families, and inviting families to be partners in supporting their child’s learning. These lessons should all be considered when working to engage families as partners and collaborators in learning.

Lesson 1: The Importance of Invitations to Families. Family members do not always feel that teachers and schools welcome their involvement as educational partners, and this can be a particular issue for low-income families and families of color, even though they reported wanting to be engaged in their child’s math learning. Helping families feel welcome and as equal partners in their child’s learning is an important contextual factor that needs to be considered.

Lesson 2: The Importance of Family–Teacher Trust. Family members trust teachers as the primary source of information regarding their child’s learning. For families to engage with online supports or other resources, messaging about their value and importance needs to come from the teacher. This trust goes both ways, so building relationships of trust in which family members can share concerns is an essential precondition to a successful design. Research finds that low-income families of color and families of varying linguistic backgrounds are often underrepresented in school-level decision-making and family involvement activities. This speaks to differing needs, values, and levels of trust rather than families’ lack of interest or unwillingness to get involved.

Lesson 3: The Importance of Family–Teacher Collaboration. In general, teachers are frequently only in touch with families when discipline issues arise. Hence, there is value in establishing collaborative relationships and proactively communicating with positive and learning-related news early and often. Families value invitations to discuss their child’s learning as an equal to educators. Family members demonstrated that they sometimes do not feel like equals in decision-making relative to their child’s education, which supports the notion of empowering parents as partners in supporting learning. Not all parents know where to look for help, and some may not come to the school for assistance when they are not sure how to help their child.

Lesson 4: Honoring Family Experience Over Theoretical Models. To fully engage in community work with restricted resources, challenges with poverty, public trust, and language barriers requires significant energy, attention, and nuance. This is particularly true in math, as this is a subject in which parents and families tend to have less confidence in their content knowledge and skills, and are therefore more reluctant to get involved in their child’s learning at home.

Lesson 5: Community-Based Work with Families is Resource-Intensive. Implementing this project was resource-intensive work and given that, Imagine Learning concluded that there is a need to identify additional strategies that are more cost-effective in building math efficacy. We know that there is a need to develop community-specific, family-responsive designs, and one potential solution could be to provide coaching and support to families at the community level instead of individual schools.

Imagine Learning continually seeks design solutions to support the relationship between teachers, families, children, and mathematics content, as we recognize that family members are the greatest asset in children’s learning and development. Learn more in our white paper about this research study and the effects COVID-19 also had on the body of work.

Posted on June 9, 2021October 13, 2023 by

June 9, 2021 4:01 pm

Combining Virtual Learning and Hands-On Experience

When Keith Marsh, Executive Director of Indiana Agriculture & Technology School, launched a charter school in 2018–2019, he was looking to combine virtual learning and hands-on experience.

“The key thing that makes it work is engagement,” said Keith Marsh, Executive Director of Indiana Agriculture & Technology School. “Every student here has an individual plan,” he said. “That’s why our kids do so well.”

When Marsh launched a charter school in 2018–2019, he was looking to develop a school that combined virtual learning and hands-on experience. Focused on agriculture and technology sciences, the school is designed to offer career pathways through partnerships with agribusiness and corporations, leading to promising career opportunities after graduation.

Indiana Agriculture utilizes Edgenuity Instructional Services as its core curriculum and pairs it with enrichment experiences on a local farm. Through carefully cultivated partnerships designed to prepare students for college and career, students can choose from a variety of specialized courses such as robotics and welding. Students also have the opportunity to earn certifications through the IATS Agriculture Pathways or Drone Certification Program offered at the school.

student does assignment on handheld device

“The key thing that makes our program work is student engagement. They’re not just online by themselves.”

Keith Marsh

Executive Director

Maximizing Distance Learning

Indiana Agriculture also got creative by integrating virtual learning and hands-on experience by livestreaming activities on the farm. This method proved successful throughout the pandemic, and they plan to continue to use video to scale up their capacity and build a curriculum archive.

For routine procedures like inoculating livestock, their teachers can record the video and make it available to students for review. Unique and often unpredictable teaching moments like the birth of an animal can also be recorded and incorporated into the curriculum, regardless of when a student takes the course.

“The goal was always to grow slowly and deliberately to ensure our students are getting the best experience possible,” said Marsh. And now, he and his team are realizing that a video archive gives them the scalability needed to provide consistent, engaging experiences to more students. This also opens up the possibilities of satellite campuses across the state, which could focus on other areas of agribusiness such as greenhouse production and goat farming.

Setting the Standard

“The key thing that makes our program work is student engagement. They’re not just online by themselves. They’re engaging with Edgenuity teachers, watching livestreams, attending Zoom classes with our teachers, and visiting the campus when appropriate,” said Marsh. “When people talk about kids losing learning because they’re on a virtual platform, it’s not because of the platform, it’s because the student is not engaged.”

He emphasized the importance of the teacher–student relationship and noted how their students have open communication with the teachers and each other.

Through its evolving partnership with Edgenuity, Indiana Agriculture has also amplified the resources available to students with special needs. “We don’t give up on kids,” said Marsh, who added that if a student is willing to put in the work, “we stick with them and give them the tools to succeed.”

“We want to set the standard for this type of program,” said Marsh. “Virtual learning is going to continue to grow across school communities, and students can be successful in this platform if we engage and support them appropriately.”

Posted on May 5, 2021October 12, 2023 by

May 5, 2021 8:00 am

Teachers Deserve Our Appreciation — and So Much More

This Teacher Appreciation Week — and every week — it’s more important than ever to recognize the selfless and critical work that teachers do for students, families, and communities.

With all the stories this week about how teachers went above and beyond this year, it’s tempting to see teachers as superheroes. But it’s important to remember that they’re not superhuman. Teachers need acknowledgment, gratitude, and, most importantly, support every single week of the year, so they can continue to do their critical work for our students and our communities.

When Stephany Hume arrived at the hospital for emergency surgery in December, she wasn’t thinking about herself. She was thinking about her fifth-grade students, and the book they had yet to finish. “I thought ‘I can’t leave these poor kids hanging,’” she told reporters, after her 11-day stint teaching from a hospital bed caught the attention of the media and warmed the hearts of a pandemic-weary public.

Her story is inspiring — and unsurprising to anyone who knows teachers.

Teacher is assisting a student, both are wearing masks

If there’s one good thing to come out of this incredibly difficult year, it’s the renewed appreciation we have for the heroic work that our teachers do every day. As the often invisible frontline worker, teachers have persevered through unpredictable schedules, ever-changing guidelines, and unimaginable trauma to provide hope, stability, and support to their students.

This Teacher Appreciation Week, it’s more important than ever to recognize the selfless and critical work that teachers do for students, families, and communities. But appreciation is not enough—we must also listen to and learn from the teachers in our lives, and do everything we can to make the noblest profession as rewarding and empowering as possible.

“There is a very strong sense of social solidarity at the moment; people recognising how we all depend on each other.”

Professor Tony Gallagher

Queen’s University Belfast

Learn from teachers’ resilience

Teachers are the greatest driving force behind learning. And they have taught us all a lot this year.

As a digital learning company, we had a front-row seat to many of the ways teachers used technology to meet students where they are and embrace and celebrate their differences. From teaching tactile concepts in a digital environment to orienting children to COVID safety protocols in fun and age-appropriate ways, teachers were masters of innovation and resilience. They found new ways to engage students who learn at different speeds and struggled to adjust to unsettling circumstances and new environments. “Instead of being so focused on making sure all the kids get the same thing,” said Amanda Brooks, Virtual Support Specialist Counselor at AVA in Georgia, “Individual kids get what they need.”

A recent study by the University of Texas at Austin on Trauma, Teacher Stress, and COVID-19 found day-to-day student connections are a big part of why teachers teach. And when schools went remote last spring, they really missed that connection. But teachers adapted quickly, using technology to scale their time with students and offer safe, consistent, individual support. “Our teachers are always in beta mode. So they’re never done,” said Lesley Clifton, Director of Online Learning at Classical Academy in California. “They’re always learning, trying, growing.”

While educators are increasingly confident that we won’t have to return to an all-remote model, teachers have seen firsthand how different kinds of students shine in different environments—and they’re adjusting their approach accordingly. “We’re learning that some students just need to learn a little bit differently than everyone around them,” said Jamie Max, Director of District 308 in Illinois.

“When we talk about teachers and teaching, it’s not just the students they’re impacting, they’re engaging and impacting families and — by extension — whole communities.”

Kimberlin Rivers

Vice President, Imagine Learning

Uplift teachers as pillars of the community

While teachers are known for juggling increasingly difficult circumstances with magnificent grace, teaching is still undervalued.

An Ipsos/USA Today poll found that nearly three-quarters of Americans said that a teacher had a significant, positive impact on their life, and a majority believed teachers are not fairly compensated for their work. And their belief is borne out in the data, which shows that teachers in many parts of the country earn less than the family living wage. “The profession isn’t as respected as it used to be, when teachers were pillars of the community,” said Kimberlin Rivers, Vice President, Instruction at Weld North Education.

But the pandemic has introduced a shift in the public narrative around essential workers, and teachers are no exception. “During a crisis, assumptions start to fall apart a little bit and people start to question things they had previously accepted and taken for granted,” Queen’s University Belfast Professor Tony Gallagher, who tracked the shifting public perceptions of teachers during COVID, said. “There is a very strong sense of social solidarity at the moment; people recognising how we all depend on each other.”

We’ve always known that teachers have influence extending far beyond their stated role. The numerous roles teachers play for students and the community—mentor, coach, counselor, social worker—were brought into sharper focus this past year as the pandemic underscored many systemic issues in American education.

“When we talk about teachers and teaching, it’s not just the students they’re impacting,” Rivers said. “They’re engaging and impacting families and—by extension—whole communities.”

Advocate for a more supportive, flexible future for the profession

While professionals in other fields benefit from pandemic-induced workplace flexibility, teachers will likely return to a more rigid schedule as they head back into the classroom. But schools can and should learn from this experience and find ways to use technology to create efficiencies and flexibility for their teachers.

In a piece titled “Why Schools Should Embrace Flexibility and Innovation Beyond COVID-19,” the Urban Institute argued that making flexible school options permanent could benefit many students, including the significant portion of students who work while attending school.

The same argument could be made for teachers, who are already dealing with enormous amounts of stress and burnout. According to the 2019 PDK Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools, half of public-school teachers were considering quitting their jobs before COVID. And the stress of the pandemic has only intensified the crisis. Retirements are up, morale is down, and schools are scrambling to fill open positions as their teachers decide not to return to the classroom in the fall. If we want to keep teachers in the profession, we need to find ways to embrace flexibility and give teachers more, not fewer, options for when and how they connect with their students.