A Cyber School Experience (2014)

In my dissertation population, one of the families did some Cyberschool. The dad was a pilot with a very unpredictable schedule. The mom was a school psychologist. She pointed out about her job, “I was working full time, and as you know it’s not full time, it’s more like sixty or seventy hours a week [laughter].” This combination of jobs made raising children difficult. They decided that one of them needed to be home and she wanted to stay home with her children. Both parents felt they could get by for a while on his salary alone.  

When asked why they homeschooled, she replied:

The kids actually brought it up. ‘Oh, we’d like to homeschool.’  A couple of kids in their class had come and gone and they said that they liked it. I started thinking about it and they started thinking about it – it could be a lot of fun. 2014

When we first spoke, her son had just turned twelve and her daughter was nine. Their experiences in school were very good – they weren’t leaving because of problems. Homeschooling just seemed like a good idea:

It was like, wow! We could travel. So, a big thing was the ability to do things with them, spend time with them. They are at the age where they are in love with their parents. Let’s go and have fun. Versus when they are maybe like teenagers and they’re wanting some more anonymity and want to break from parents. Let’s really enjoy this time we have with them now. 2014

The kids were going into first and third grades when they started homeschooling, and for a mom who was giving up her job, not paying tuition for private school was a financial boon. So, they decided to give it a try:

So, why did we pick [Cyberschooling]? Well, I wasn’t interested in unschooling, although outside of our school day, which is very short because we do Cyberschooling, the whole rest of the day is unschooling. It’s not like I don’t like unschooling, but I also want them to have some sense of what the expectations would be if they went back to school. 2014

There are ‘tons’ of cyber schools to choose from, and they chose to use PA Cyber. Cyber school is funded by tax dollars and is free to those enrolled. The school provides everything – materials, equipment, teachers, instruction etc.:

So, you get your computer. You get your printers, you get your scanner, you get all your materials for free. Everything! My daughter, when she was in first grade, she got a big, huge Rubbermaid box of art supplies, everything you could imagine. I mean and then some, to the point that she couldn’t even get through them all. And she loves all that stuff; she was thrilled to be getting that. And they even got gym stuff sent to them. 2014

Through fourth grade, you get a single teacher that you can do synchronous classes with. You choose what time of day. You can start eight o’clock in the morning, do all your virtual classes and be done by noon. Or you could start at ten.  You go online and you get to see the teacher, and everybody else gets to communicate, and if you’ve got a question, you’ve got a little icon that you click and it raises a hand and she will say ‘Ok whoever, what’s your question?” or a comment or your presentation and things like that. Whatever schedule you picked at the beginning of the year, you are going to have all year long. 2014

This family chose not to do synchronous classes:

We do flexible or asynchronous classes, so that we can do it whenever we want. If we travel and want to take a week off, we’re not penalized because we’ve missed five days, because we get the kids to advance, get two or three weeks done, so we can go away and not take our stuff. And I’ll call their instructional supervisors and say we’re going to be in Arizona for ten days; I really don’t want to bring our stuff with us. “Oh good, you guys are way ahead, don’t even worry about it.” 2014

If you do it synchronous for primary grades, it’s probably about an hour per class – so four hours a day, and then you can have other things, like you can take a music class, a sewing class, you can take a cooking class.  

In fifth grade through twelfth, the secondary grades, the older kids have way more independence. Her son whips through things:

He’s a good reader, so he has to read all this stuff, listen to different things, go visit different websites, and then he has to take tests and write essays to show how he’s doing. What happens is, his stuff gets scanned in and then a teacher grades everything. But all of his assignments, every day now gets, every little test he has to take, and every little simple little thing gets graded by a 5^th grade teacher, which was last year. In sixth grade he will have a separate teacher for each subject. 2014

There is so much flexibility once you reach the higher grades:

He wants to get it done so he can have his day to himself. And it’s like, 'Now if I get it all done, you’re not going to make me do more are you?' [laughter] because there isn’t like this punishment aspect, like you did really well, now do more. No but if you get done, your summer will start earlier. So that’s partly how we present it. 2014

Cyberschool for this family, choosing an asynchronous approach, allowed a very flexible approach to education. The children would work hard and complete two weeks work in one week and then the family could take a trip together, which was one of their goals.

Early on, they had thought they would enroll their kids back in school for seventh and eighth grade, not for academic but for social reasons. Well, things took a turn. The following year, 2015, her daughter asked to return to traditional school, not so much for social reasons but for academic reasons. She feared she’d fall behind and not cover the curriculum she should. She did also admit that she finished school at home so early and then had to wait around for her friends in traditional school to finish up and come home so she could see them. She liked being in the midst of them in a classroom.

And her son, chose to continuing homeschooling for seventh grade, the time mom had thought they might go back to school for social reasons.

Life is hard to predict! Things happen!