This is what distance learning should look like in the fall | Virtual School - CNN

When Kim Reeder started teaching in Parker, Colorado, 14 years ago, she found that managing the classroom environment took way more time and energy than actually teaching kids, and she couldn't reach as many of them as she wanted by Lisa Selin Davis, Freelance Writer - New York.

Kim Reeder, a middle school social studies teacher at Colorado Connections Academy, said virtual education enables her to meet each students individual needs.

"I knew there were kids being left behind or not being pushed hard enough, because due to time constraints and class sizes, I had to teach the middle," she said.

Then Reeder discovered virtual school. As a middle school social studies teacher at Colorado Connections Academy for the past 13 years, she found "there's really no classroom management." Online teaching at the academy, a public K through 12 school, gives her time, freedom and energy to "give every student what they need."

Many schools around the world abruptly transitioned to distance learning in March, when Covid-19 forced brick-and-mortar schools to shutter. But much of what students experienced didn't represent real online school, in which teachers are trained to teach remotely and online... 

Rethinking and relearning the pedagogy

Prior to the pandemic, very few teachers received training in how to teach online.

"The more traditionally an educator has been teaching, the less likely they would have been to consider taking an online class," DeMichele said; they wouldn't have learned to teach one, or experienced one themselves.

Yet students have evolved in their technological mastery. "We are teaching teachers to teach students who no longer exist," she said...

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Source: CNN