Roundtable:
Training and Professional Development for

Virtual School Teachers

Session 1 Notes

Guest Experts: Nancy Mallison and Mary Mitchell, Florida Virtual School

FVS has a great deal of movement in the organization and this requires ongoing PD. The organization has experienced enormous growth over their ten years. For example, FVS currently has a waitlist of 20,000 students.

Nancy Mallison spoke to how FVS works to differentiate their professional development for all FVS teachers.

·  Online training plus f2f training focused on culture, systems, policy (over 3 days)

·  They have follow-up calls (series of 8 done virtually) for new teachers – these could be over the phone or by Elluminate. The calls are recorded in case people miss a session.

·  All new teachers are assigned a mentor.

One of the more recent initiatives at FVS is team teaching. FVS employed a unique PD approach in that they brought in marriage counselors and communication experts to help teachers learn how to co-teach.

Question for Nancy and Mary: What are the top 3-5 skills you have to get across to teachers?

  1. Adjusting to the new world (virtual world is not the same as the traditional face-to-face world)
  2. Communication – IM, Elluminate, course management systems are all very different ways of interacting (than traditional face-to-face methods)
  3. The building of their own schedule (learning how to blend home and work life)

Overall, Nancy and Mary said that it is the "mental adjustment" that is hardest for incoming virtual school teachers. Often, people think the technology is the hard part, but in reality, the learning management system (Educator) is easy.

Question for Nancy and Mary: Do you have lead teachers in each subject:

·  No – they are called liaisons and they are involved with ongoing course updates.

Question for Nancy and Mary: What is the turnover of teachers?

·  Not as high as traditional school because of the support they get and the relationships they build.

Question for Nancy and Mary: How do you ensure that teachers are learning the skills necessary for online instruction of students?

·  We have a checklist and teachers are required to do ongoing PD and get guidance from administrators about what type of training they need.

·  We look at frequency of communication, email turnaround, welcome emails, review assessments and feedback for quality – many teachers needed to do more detailed feedback. This is called a classroom walkthrough.

·  FVS also has an outside organization conduct surveys for students and parents on all teachers – the information from the surveys plays heavily into teacher reviews and determining what type of PD teachers need.

·  Teachers are also surveyed to determine their needs. FVS uses a lot of National Board Teachers and outside experts to come in and provide PD.

Question for Nancy and Mary: Does FVS have any community-building among teachers?

·  Yes – teachers are within groups both online and face-to-face for collegial support

·  FVS holds an annual face-to-face conference for over 800 teachers

Session 2 Notes

Guest Expert: Nicole Honore, Louisiana Virtual School

LVS was created eight years ago through funding from the State Board of Education. The school started with seven teachers and 130 students. Currently LVS has 5000 students and has additional funding from the State Board of Education as well as from Bell South. The school employs about 50 total teachers and 15 of them are full time (teaching 5 full courses).

LVS staff is just eight – unfortunately those people aren't 100% on LVS because they are a program within a division.

LVS courses are limited to 25 students/course.

Teacher professional development is a strong component – it goes along with the statewide online professional development initiative.

LVS has a Five Phase Teacher Training and Professional Development Approach where they combine content and instruction from both external vendors and internal staff. See Louisiana Virtual School Teacher Training and Professional Development for details on each of the five phases.

Teacher retention is excellent – most likely due to strong oversight and ongoing professional development/support.

·  Teachers all have content-specific mentors

·  LVS has three face-to-face meetings per year for staff (back-to-school, mid-year (optional), end-of-year). Instructors receive $600/year for travel to attend these meetings.

·  Instructors have end-of-year evaluation (in person) meeting where they bring professional growth plan from previous year and discuss it with supervisor while planning for the coming year.

·  LVS has a technical staff of three professionals and one - two student workers to support instructors.

·  All instructors (subject-specific) get together to do feedback prior to annual revision on content – every major course is revised at least every two years.

LVS has found that their mentor teachers need their own professional development. Building this type of support is one of LVS's goals for the coming year.

Question for Nicole: How much money do you spend on teacher professional development?

·  We set aside about $600-700 per teacher per year for PD.

·  Just got funding from DOE to start up LA Online Virtual Academy (just for AP courses) 40% of that funding is set aside for PD of teachers to get them ready to teach AP content – will work with a local IHE to train teachers.

Question for Nicole: How do you structure the payscale?

·  The payscale is based on the five phases of teacher training – participants earn more money for more responsibility.

Question for Nicole: Are instructors allowed to individualize courses?

·  Yes – instructors come in and create supplements to the existing content.

·  Teachers have full freedom to bring in additional resources.

ETLO/SREB/ISTE Online Learning Institute http://edtechleaders.org/forms/conf2007/oli07_archives.asp

July 2007