For many high school students the typical brick and mortar school setting works just fine. For others, the classroom is not an effective place to learn for a variety of reasons.
For them, there is an alternative.
Since 2004 Minnesota high school students have had the option to take tuition-free classes from the comfort of their own home and at a time that fits into their schedule.
There are a variety of online schools that are approved by the Minnesota Department of Education (MDH), but BlueSky Online School was the first in the state. When it started, the Brooklyn Center-based charter school enrolled fewer than 50 students and the school’s first graduating class in June 2005 consisted of 17 people. Today the school has grown to about 760 students and the graduation rate is around 65 percent.
Online schooling offers many bonuses such as flexible class schedules and a personal, almost one-on-one, education.
However, online classes are not suitable for every student.
“I believe they are a good alternative for students who have a lot of self-discipline, good basic skills and superior time management skills,” said Ray Staatz, PAS middle school/high school principal. “It is not for students who lack these skills as I have seen almost 95 percent of them not complete the program and often not even one class.”
Leasa Kulm, a Spanish teacher for BlueSky who teaches from her Pipestone home, agrees that the key to success with online schooling is self-motivation.
“All you need is high-speed internet and determination and a will to graduate and be successful,” she said.
Jenna Raaf, a 15-year-old tenth grader, said she decided to give BlueSky a try near the end of her eighth grade year at PAS. Now in her third year of online schooling, she believes it helps her better retain the information she learns.
“I like it better,” she said. “You get more one-on-one with the teachers. I think that I end up remembering more than what I do in a regular classroom because the teacher has so many other students and they don’t come around a whole lot and ask you questions.”
With the online classes, she said, she can contact her teachers nearly any time by phone, email or even text if she has a question.
“I’ve had teachers tell me, ‘I’m going to be in and out this weekend, but if she has any questions, my cell phone is on,’” said Deb Raaf, Jenna’s mother.
The resources for students don’t stop with the teachers. There is also a councilor, who calls each student once every month to find out how they are doing and if they have any concerns, and a home base advisor who calls once a week and talks to the student’s parents to answer any questions and help monitor the student’s progress. The councilor and advisor can also be contacted at any time by phone or email.
Kulm said the extra contact with parents is one of the biggest differences she’s noticed as a teacher.
“I taught in a regular school for seven, eight years and there’s hardly any time to contact parents,” she said. “Very rarely did I ever contact any parent.”
Each student is also given a password and ID to log in to their classes and parents can use the same password and ID to log in at any time and check the student’s grades and progress.
“As a parent I feel like I’m more involved,” Deb said.
The online classes and flexible schedules also benefit students with health issues or other extenuating circumstances. Ashley Gawerecki, 18, who graduated from BlueSky in May, made the switch to online school after her junior year when the Lake Benton high school she was attending closed.
When the school closed there were five students in her class and while some went to Tyler and some went to Elkton to finish their education, she decided to finish her schooling online.
“I really didn’t want to start over again at a new school,” she said.
Gawerecki’s mother had also passed away toward the end of her junior year in April of 2008, she said, and the online schooling gave her the private time that she needed to deal with her emotions.
“It was really hard my junior year to concentrate,” she said. “BlueSky gave me an opportunity to express my feelings in some of the papers they had us write. It gave me a way to express my emotions without doing it in front of other people. It gave me a way to cope and it really helped me a lot.”
Another difference, at least compared to many schools in rural areas, is the broad selection of classes that are offered through BlueSky. All the typical classes like math, science and language arts are available as well as not so typical elective classes like cooking, travel and tourism marketing, and cross-cultural collage art to name but a few.
The classes are also uniquely designed by the teachers. Kulm said she uses Web sites that help to illustrate her lessons, records her voice and posts it online so that students can learn the proper way to say the words, posts links to videos and requires students to call her about every two weeks to practice their Spanish to her by phone.
As for grading, multiple choice and true false assignments can be done online and graded instantly, but short answer and essay questions must be graded by the teachers. With about 86 students in Spanish one, two and three combined, the grading can become a bit overwhelming.
“Grading is constant,” Kulm said. “It’s all day every day. It really scared me my first year. It just keeps coming.”
Students can enroll at BlueSky at any time. To begin, students older than 17 or parents of students younger than 17 can go to www.blueskyschool.org and click on enroll. The first step is to fill out the enrollment form. After that, potential students will be assigned a home base teacher and a councilor with BlueSky will contact the student’s current school for transcripts.
Students are required to have access to high speed internet and must have a back up plan in case their home computer fails.
All state required tests such as the MCA-II math and science tests are offered at a variety of testing locations throughout the state and Post Secondary Education Opportunities are available to earn free college credits while in high school.
In his opinion, Staatz said, the quality of online schools has improved since they began and they can be a viable option for some students.
“It has a place in today’s education,” he said. “But I do see it as alternative education.”
