EdFix Episode 34: From Virtual to Victorious - The Remarkable Success of an Online High School

Transcript

MICHAEL CORRY
The things that Marie and Alison and the GW Online High School are teaching related to social-emotional learning tie so clearly to the students in this generation and are so important to them and their wellbeing.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
Welcome to EdFix, your source for insights about the promise and practice of education. I'm your host, Michael Feuer. I'm the Dean of the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at the George Washington University, and I have a special treat in store for our listeners in this episode, with three guests. We're going to be talking mostly about some fascinating advances in the world of online education and in particular with respect to a program that we've had now up and running with GW and with our partners for some time.

So my guests are Alison Mistretta, who is the head of school for the GWU Online High School. Alison has been there for seven years, coming with a background of substantial practical experience as a high school English teacher. And has experience in both regular, what we call brick and mortar schools and also online schools. Alison, welcome to EdFix. 

Maria Coyle is the associate head of school at the GWU Online High School, and I'm happy to say is an alumni of our great Graduate School of Education and Human Development here at GW. Maria has her PhD in counseling and is licensed as a professional counselor and school counselor and has particular interests in issues of adolescent development and how counselors as professionals work with young people on all aspects of their development and their education.

And our third guest is my most distinguished colleague on the faculty of the Graduate School of Education, Dr. Michael Corry, professor of educational technology, whose research covers a whole range of overlapping topics such as online student, teacher and administrator success, online learning policy, digital and instructional design, just to name a few. In his spare time, Professor Corry is our senior director of online learning initiatives for the graduate school and has been a member of the faculty for lo these many years, more years than my own tenure at the school. 

For those of our listeners who don't yet have a fingertip appreciation of what the GWU Online High school really is, who its clients are, who the students are, where it is, give us a little bit of the story of the GWUOHS. Any one of you can start that part of the conversation.

ALISON MISTRETTA:
I will hop in, and of course I'm going to let Dr. Coyle and Dr. Corry address how it was founded because they were here since the beginning. But we are an online individual college preparatory program serving grades eight through 12. We really distinguish ourselves with that college preparation and we can dive into all that we offer our students in those areas, but we offer a flexible learning environment online for our students who need it the most. It's extremely important to us that we provide individualized one-on-one attention and support, and that can be seen with the teachers, with the college counselors, and with the advising model as well.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
That was Alison. Say another sentence about how many students we have in the online high school and a little bit about what are the technological requirements for connecting with a nice sizable population of students online?

ALISON MISTRETTA:
We currently have a little over 400 students, again in grades eight through 12. And really all students need is an operating laptop with internet access. We have students who are accessing their coursework all over the world. We have international students who are accessing our platform, they are live sessions. And so really it's just that operating laptop and workable internet.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
Fascinating. Maria or Mike, do you want to add anything about some of the details of how the school came to be and where it is currently maybe?

MICHAEL CORRY:
I'm happy to jump in real quick and then, Maria, you can add to what I have to say. But the school is well over 10 years old and has just been a light in the world of online learning for our 8th through 12th grade students. It's been just a terrific experience for them. It's been a great experience for me and for the university.

We've been able to learn a lot about online learning for our high school aged students and we've been able to participate in research studies with them and further that knowledge in the field so that others can benefit from the experiences we're having. But overall, the students have been such a delight and they've done such a great job and they're growing and flourishing and prospering, and Maria and Alison have a lot to do with that along with their team.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
Maria, let me pitch this one to you then. In your experience, what would you say are some of the obstacles that you've had to overcome even in either in the way people perceive the quality of education that happens not in a person to person setting, but in a technology setting? Have you encountered something like any skepticism about why and how will, from parents for example, how will my kids succeed in spending even more time in front of a screen as if ...? You know what I'm getting at.

MARIA COYLE:
I do. I do. I think when our parents come to us, they've really vetted and researched all the different school options for their child. It's really such a personalized decision on what will work best for my student. I think the skepticism comes in when we're talking around college counseling. So if my student comes here, will they be able to move on to college? Will they accept you as a legitimate school because you're online? And I think that that's something we've worked really hard to establish those relationships over the last 10 plus years with admissions offices, with our alumni base as our students graduate, to really make sure that the universities and the public out there know we are a legitimate school and your student will be academically challenged. And I think perhaps that's also a misperception that we might be easier, quote unquote, easier than a brick and mortar.

And many of our families find that we are a little bit harder. To go along with that though, I'll say our graduates say they are very prepared for college. The hardest part for them is if they go to a brick and mortar college sitting in a seat through a lecture. So just learning to be able to sit for some period of time and focus on the professor is the challenge. But overall, I think we've come a really long way with the acceptance of online learning. It's all of us here. I know the university, Dr. Corry, Mrs. Mistretta, everyone at our school, K-12, have tried really hard to make sure to get the good word out there about the legitimate education that our students are getting.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
I'm going to play the part of a bit of devilish advocate here and just push this conversation a little. When I think back to my own days in high school, I do remember some of the actual academic parts of that, but what I really remember is how much I learned from being a part of a complex moving diverse society of young people pushing their way, whether in the halls to get to class or on the baseball field, trying to get in the batting order. In other words, a lot of the social aspects of youth development come to my mind when I think about, okay, so how do you do any of that stuff when you're online?

ALISON MISTRETTA:
I'll hop in here. That is one of the first questions that we get from potential families, is how is my student going to socialize? Maria and I, every single time we get that question, we try to put it into action because we know, especially as parents, we know how extremely important that is to the students. We have built a robust community with our students. We offer over 50 clubs to our students, and oftentimes we run the gambit with our clubs. And a lot of those clubs are student run and a lot of those clubs are brought to Maria and me by a student saying, listen, I'm interested in women's empowerment. And we say, write up a proposal, and they write up a proposal and we approve the club. And then like I mentioned, a lot of those students are running the clubs. Through all of that, the students we have seen make incredible bonds with each other.

We have students going off to college together, wanting to room together. And so a lot of times, especially being that English teacher, you can grow relationships with the written word, whether it's over an instant message or whatnot, and you can actually build really strong relationships from that. We take so much pride in that community that we have built for our students.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
Let's talk a little bit about the students.

I understand that there's a number of them who come to the online opportunity or the option because of perhaps difficulties that they've experienced in typical classroom settings, others who may come because of either family or geographical constraints they have. I know we've had a number of elite athletes who have enrolled in the online high school. To what extent are you feeling that the population of students covers the array of situations in ways that typical schools may have more difficulty doing? 

MICHAEL CORRY:
Well, it's a terrific question, and as I was thinking about not only that, but thinking about the interactions that these students have with each other, the previous question that you had, it all ties together, because these students really come from such diverse backgrounds. And when we first started the school, we thought it would primarily serve international students. We thought there'd be a heavy international influx into the school. And we have had some international students, but we really have had students spread throughout the United States and spread throughout the world. And they come with such different backgrounds. As you said, some are elite athletes, some are involved in plays in Broadway and other things like that. Some are involved in other things that make an online learning opportunity, something that really gives them the opportunity for success, not only in their schooling, but in whatever else they're doing.

We also have a section, a subsection of students who come because traditional brick and mortar schools hasn't worked for them for whatever reason. Might be because they've been bullied. It might be because they can't find the right fit. But that's one of the great things about our online high school and about online learning in general, is it opens doors to make possibilities become a reality. And there's a lot of people out there that feel like they're stuck in their learning environment, and this is just another opportunity for them to learn and grow and find success. And that's what it's really all about. And that was really probably the driving factor for us when we decided to create GWU Online High School, was that we wanted to have an opportunity for students who needed something else, who needed something a little bit different.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
Do Alison or Maria have something to add to that? It's a very important part of the whole program here.

MARIA COYLE:
One thing I do want to touch on it that I think makes our school unique, is that our students also come from all around the world. So whatever the reason for joining us, they're located in many different places joining in different time zones, but they all get to learn from one another. I think that allows for really unique experiences for all of our students to be in classrooms with others who are situated throughout the United States or throughout the world, and to hear and learn from what's going on with them and their environment. I think it ties in incredibly well with our focus on social wellness for our students, for them to really have relationship skills, to have that social awareness of what's going on in the world. And so I think our classroom environment and our school environments really take into a deeper level that some local brick and mortar schools can offer.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
That's a fascinating aspect of the design. And then the management of even a syllabus, if a high school math teacher is able to work with curriculum and syllabus specialists in a way that enables the core material to be presented, but then with these other opportunities for students who may not have been able to connect in the first instance, a lot of logistics there. Are you finding that the teachers who work in that setting have enough of the, shall we say, preparation to be that flexible with the way they're presenting the material?

ALISON MISTRETTA:
We have extremely experienced staff. Also, we have some of the hardest working staff that you will find. Maria and I end up having to shut them off sometimes because they would work around the clock if they could. And so that's one of the extremely important things to Maria and myself whenever we're interviewing new staff members, is they have to fit into this model. And one thing that has to stand out to us is their dedication to the students and ensuring that they're doing all that they can to meet each of the students need. And I really truly, and I think Maria could vouch for this as well, I cannot speak more highly about these staff. We are blessed with the staff members that we have.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
Is it still true that there are some topics that are more amenable to online teaching than other topics? What's the latest word on the way in which the technology works differentially for different topics in the school day?

ALISON MISTRETTA:
I will say, and I'll let Maria chime in here, another question that we get all the time is how do you do these science labs? I'm going to speak personally. My daughter is a student at our school. She's a sophomore at our school, and it's pretty incredible. Before the beginning of a semester, they will get a huge box of materials, and in those materials are the lab kits, and you have absolutely everything you need from the chemicals, the test tubes, goggles, everything that you need. And I'll walk downstairs and she'll be in the kitchen doing this comprehensive chemistry experiment, probably more experiments than I did myself in high school. We provide those students with all of the opportunities that they need for those lab sciences. Maria?

MARIA COYLE:
I just want to add that I think we strive to educate our students as a whole student as well. I wanted to add into that teaching component. Our counselors are also teachers, so they provide a course in those live sessions to our students. And again, if they can't make it, they're recorded, but they're available all the time as well. I feel like in a brick and mortar school, you sometimes might see your counselor around the building. I think school counselors are amazing, but over saddled with their caseload, they might not have the opportunity to always meet one-on-one other than scheduling around things that are college. I think something really unique to our school is that our counselors are always available for all of our students all the time in the same way to provide career college support and also all of those academic, social, emotional skills that our students need.

And the same goes with our advisors. All of our students get assigned an advisor and no matter where they live in the world, that advisor's available for them and for their family to make sure that they're successful at our school.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
Say a little bit more about the process part of social and emotional learning that takes place with people looking at each other on TV screens.

MARIA COYLE:
Our advising team does a fantastic job of creating our social-emotional learning curriculum based off of CASEL. Based on advisory homerooms, our students meet together live and engage around a different topic every month. We highlight that information for our learning coaches, so we partner with them to reinforce that information. Then in our instructional side, our teachers are also using promising practices to make sure that they are modeling what social-emotional learning looks like, but also engaging our students in live lessons using those social-emotional learning components as well. It reinforces how students interact with one another, how they interact with their teachers, with their caregivers, and really works to create our school community.

I'll say also our restorative processes for things that might go awry, disagreements or plagiarism, we use that as learning opportunities for our students as well. It's really embedded really in everything we do as a school to make sure that our students graduate from our high school prepared with those skill sets, the skills they need to be successful in career or college, whatever their post-secondary choice might be.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
By the way, CASEL is the acronym for the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, if I have that right. 

Anyone else want to get in on this complicated issue of how to promote social and emotional learning in an environment where there isn't too much social and emotional interaction at least of the way we typically think of it?

ALISON MISTRETTA:
I will say, and this is where I'm going to give my shout-out to Maria, she has just done a really incredible job of building this curriculum, especially with her experience and her background, to ensure that it is going to work for our students. And this is where I do want to note how, Maria and I are very reflective as leaders. We take a look at a situation and we think, what did we do right? What could we have done better? And one of the things that we have done that with is the influx of mental health struggles that our teenagers are currently facing, particularly since COVID. We can speak from experience. We have seen an increase in mental health issues sadly in our students and the teenagers. And so Maria took this idea to really try to help those students and to make a difference in helping them with their mental health.

MICHAEL CORRY:
If I could jump in and just add. I think it's important to be very strategic in planning for these things so that they actually occur. For example, I know Maria and Alison have planned out two months of the school year where they focus on social awareness and a couple of months where they focus on self-management, a couple of months where they focus on self-awareness and then a couple of months where they focus on relationship building and skills. I think this goes back to a previous question, that whether our high school students are taking classes online or in bricks and mortar, socially they're very different than any other generation, than any other group. Their phones are everything. Social media rules the day.

And the things that Marie and Alison and the GW Online High School are teaching related to social-emotional learning tie so clearly to the students in this generation and are so important to them and their wellbeing. But a lot of it as I started is because they're very strategic, they're very mindful, and they plan these things out and they do a wonderful job of it. It's not something that just happens to occur. There's some really good planning and work behind the scenes that makes it possible. And I think that's important to remember, and that's something that we can all learn from.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
We're almost at our time limit here, but I want to just try two possibly related questions. What are the implications from what you have learned in the online high school for the preparation of future educators to work in that kind of an environment? Are we preparing future teachers with enough, shall we say, flexibility in their skillset to be able to work in different kinds of educational settings? And have you learned enough to provide some guidance to, for example, education schools that want to prepare teachers for all kinds of settings? Now, that's a loaded question and too big to answer in the two minutes we have left. But I want you to try that and maybe in that context, since you've come yourselves from different backgrounds in teaching, to say a little bit about your own backgrounds and how it led you to this line of work that you're so deeply involved in now. 

MICHAEL CORRY:
All right. Thank you, Michael. Those are two huge questions you asked, and we could do probably multiple EdFix segments to discuss them. I'll tell you in 30 seconds. I think in K-12 education and in higher education across the board, we are at crossroads. And a lot of things are happening. A lot of things are changing in the world, a lot of new technologies, a lot of different areas of focus and a lot of things that we need to pay attention to. And in order to better help our students, in order to better help our learners in general, we are at a point where we really need to do some really strong self-examination and identify what works now, what will work in the next 10 years, next 20 years, and how we go about things and then make some changes.

And it's going to be hard, but I'm just so thrilled, like I said previously, that our GW Online High School is leading the way in many of these things. And there are many, many things that come out of the online high school that can be applicable to help not only the learners and their families who are in high school, but also the schools of education and others. And so this is one of the reasons we have this terrific partnership, and it's just been a real blessing to everybody involved. I will say you also wanted a quick how we got here moment. I've been at the university for, this is my 26th year at the university. I started off, actually grew up in Northern Virginia and then went to school and got a business degree. Worked in the business field as a consultant in IT for a few years, and then decided you know what, my talent was really as a teacher, and I really knew that.

And so I went back and got a master's degree and a doctoral degree, a PhD in instructional technology and educational technology. Love teaching, love seeing people learn and the light bulbs go off and love being able to use new and exciting technologies to do so. That's how I got here, and I'm really lucky to work with such a wonderful group of people.

MARIA COYLE:
I started at GW getting my doctorate, but also as a research assistant with early childhood special ed in helping prepare special ed teachers. And so I've seen through that program and also adjuncting, teaching school counselors, the preparation that they go through to be then transitioned into the world of work where you're just hands on day one. I think that our preparation programs try incredibly hard in what I'll say, and I just want to put out there, is that I really hope caregivers partner with us and that we can continue to work together. At the end of the day we want your student to be successful as much as you want your student to be successful, we're all on the same page with the same goals. And while we might have different views of how to get there, I really think if we can come together and start having conversations with that same goal in mind, we can really make a difference for our students.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
Thanks, Maria.

ALISON MISTRETTA:
And I just want to say, just as online learning isn't a good fit for some students, it might not be a good fit for some teachers. I really feel that it takes a special skill set to be an online teacher, but that's one of the wonderful things that Maria and I love doing, is mentoring and coaching the staff who do come on board. Just a little bit about me. I came from a very small rural town in Pennsylvania, but luckily my dad saw big and he saw that his children needed to go out and make as big of a difference in the world as they possibly could. And that has driven me my entire life. That's why I got into education. And then in this role as well as with teaching, I'm not sure there's a better honor than being able to make a difference on our future generation.

And that's why I always say I have to pinch myself in this position, because we're doing that every single day and I have to say that a lot of that is due to Mike and Maria and me being here today. I am forever appreciative to them and to be in this role.

MICHAEL J. FEUER:
Well, it's just been a delight and quite exhilarating to hear so much enthusiasm and passion that you bring to this. You're also connecting to a university that believes in evidence and research. I think that's one of the virtues of the online high school arrangement, is that we are providing a ongoing evaluative function here. And I'm confident that we're also contributing to the field in terms of knowledge about online learning.

Thank you so very much for being my guests on EdFix. Wishing you continued success in this wonderful venture.

With that, I'm happy to tell our listeners that if you enjoyed this episode of EdFix, well, there's a whole bunch more and you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, iHeartRadio, Google Podcasts, or other such venues. And we have a website for EdFix called edfixpodcast.com. Special thanks to our brilliant producer, technical manager, and all-purpose communications guru, Touran Waters.

And special thanks also to Mike Corry, Alison Mistretta, and Maria Coyle for today's episode. Thank you so very much.
 

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