January 2005

Providing Additional Resources to Homeschooled Highschoolers

The Enrichment Cooperative, Elisabeth Silver, Site Coordinator

The Enrichment Cooperative (TEC) serves K–12 children who are homeschooled in the Spokane School District. Students who are enrolled in TEC spend two days a week on campus with their parents, taking classes ranging from karate to writing to science.

This year, TEC's 50 high school students have additional classes to choose from through the Digital Learning Commons (DLC). But these classes are taken online.

DLC helps extend class offerings

"The most wonderful thing about the DLC is that we're able to offer classes to our high school students that we were unable to offer before. And also, we're able to offer the DLC Library and college and career planning resources, the SAT prep courses," says TEC Site Coordinator Elisabeth Silver, who also serves as the DLC teacher/mentor, registrar, and librarian.

"Parents are interested in having their kids take core classes online in areas that parents don't feel are their strengths. The online classes serve as a supplement to what kids are learning at home."

TEC requires students who take classes through the DLC to devote two hours a week of campus time to their online classes. This allows Silver to mentor students, answer questions, and support any other issues that come up.

Online classes expose students to new challenges

TEC students have found the online classes more rigorous than they had anticipated. "A lot of these students weren't used to deadlines and hadn't taken multiple choice tests before. All those things we take for granted," Silver explains. "Some of them had never turned on a computer before taking these classes...This is a phenomenal opportunity."

TEC has learned a lot this semester too. "Next semester, we'll do the orientation in groups: one orientation for those who have already taken DLC classes, and one for those who haven't. That will be a huge difference. I made the incorrect assumption that students knew more about technology than they did."

Benefits from the parents' point of view

Silver thinks one of the reasons parents like online classes is because they are still in control of the learning. "They're able to access what their child is learning. They still have their finger in the pie," Silver points out. With homeschooled students, the virtual teacher, Silver, and the parent work as a threesome.

Additionally, parents tell Silver that by taking classes through the DLC their children are learning strategies they'll need to know for college. And children who aren't ready for a traditional classroom environment can still experience a traditional curriculum with the flexibility of working from home.

By now most of the families whose children are taking online classes have acquired computers and access at home. "I have found that for a lot of the parents, that fear of the Internet is not as pervasive as when we first started," Silver says. "I spend a lot of time training parents on how to infuse technology into education...Parents feel safe when they come in through the DLC, because they know it's monitored."

Advocacy for digital learning

When asked why she is such a strong supporter of online learning and integrating technology into education, Silver responds: "I just believe that you have to individualize the learning. There are all kinds of ways to acquire knowledge, and online learning is one of them. It opens up doors for kids that wouldn't otherwise be open. For our group of kids it's opened up a rigorous learning environment that they have not necessarily had the opportunity to experience. I see light bulbs come on: 'Oh, I didn't think I could do this!'"

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