Hilda Talks about Cyber School

J: Could you briefly tell me about your family?

H: I’m married with three children: a boy who is 21 and two girls aged 19 and 16.

J: So, why did you pick Cyber School?

H: Well, I hadn’t really heard of Cyber School up until my son was in sixth grade. I heard about it from a friend who had her kids in PA Cyber. She said we’re basically homeschooling; we’re doing Cyber School. It’s all fabulous and everything.

So I looked into it a little bit. And I thought hmm, that sounds interesting because I sort of had always felt like I wouldn’t mind trying Cyber School, but I didn’t think I had a clue enough to homeschool by myself. So, the idea that I could be supported by a full-service school online to do it was very attractive to me. At the time my son was struggling in sixth grade, and we were kind of wondering what we could do to make his experience better and so we decided we’d give Cyber School a try and see what happened. So, we took him out and put him into PAcyber and he almost immediately started doing a whole lot better and was much happier, so then we stuck with it. And then two years later the girls came out as well. The elder was having trouble in school and younger didn’t want to be by herself in brick and mortar schools, so she came out at the same time. And I kind of took a deep breath and said okay, I’m going to do it for all three of them now. I think I know what I’m doing.

In a lot of ways it made it easier because before when I had one in Cyber School and the other two in bricks and mortar I had one foot in each thing and it made it very difficult especially around school holidays and stuff, you know to be doing one thing and another at the same time?

J: When all the kids were home doing Cyber School, what did your day look like? H: Well, they have a choice with their classes. With each class that they take, they can do it as either a blended class which means they have it taught one lesson a week and they do the rest of it by themselves asynchronously. They have a teacher who is available for tutoring or whatever (they have virtual office hours every week and respond freely to phone calls and emails from parents and kids alike) They go to the teacher once a week unless they are really on pace, in which case they can choose not to go at all and just do it themselves. They have that as an option. Then there’s also a virtual option where a kid can go and have a teacher every day of the week for that subject. My kids mostly have done a mixture. They do virtual class for some subjects and blended for others depending on whether they are able to do it by themselves effectively or whether they like to have a teacher in person for that. It really varies by subject matter. We also have an academic advisor who calls up once a month to give a progress report for each kid and deal with any issues that come up.

J: What was your involvement?

H: I was very heavily involved with my youngest. She started in fifth grade and when you do Cyber School in fifth grade the parent really has to sit by them a lot of the time and really be hooked into what they are doing and guide them and help them. You get a book that’s kind of the parent book, telling you what to do for each lesson. It’s got reams of information in there. I’d sit with her over the lessons and work our way through it. So, I was very heavily involved at that point. But then when she started sixth grade, they took away all of that, and she was really expected to be much more doing it under her own motivation. I do have my own 'parent' account at PA Cyber and can log in any time and see each kids’ progress and how much time they spend on each subject etc.

J: And how did she succeed at that?

H: She did pretty good at that. I wouldn’t say she was as well trained as people coming from a brick and mortar school might be at the same age. She’s sort of a bit laid back about it, less wrapped up in maintaining 'perfect' grades and likes to add her own unique, creative 'spin' on any lengthy assignments she does.

J: How about the other two?

H: The other two started off in seventh grade, so they were a bit older and a bit more self-disciplined. I did sit with my son quite a bit because he was the first one to do it and we were both a bit clueless for quite a while with that. But my daughter has always been able to go off by herself and do school basically, so that’s what she would do, and my son did it more and more as the years went by.

J: I’m just wondering how math went for your kids.

H: Math has always been a struggle for my elder daughter. She’s a perfectionist and she does not deal well with a subject that she finds really challenging. She finds it really challenging to think in the way that math seems to require them to think, except for the odd teacher. She’d have one or two teachers that really have clicked with her. And it’s actually the same for my younger daughter as well. She is very much like this about math too. And so, in high school, my daughter chose business math and whatever the other one is that’s easier math, consumer math I think she did.

J: and she passes them?

H: Oh yeah, she got A’s in them. (laughter) She could have done some more challenging math than that. Towards the end of her time in school she started to evolve her own method for doing math. She took the math lesson, and then she would sort of translate it into her own methods and do it that way, and that seemed to work for her, although it involved a lot of extra leg work on her part.

There are a lot of different ways of doing math and I think different brains deal with it differently. I’ve got a strong artistic bent and I think that I do math in a different way to people who are more, I don’t know, it’s a different way of thinking about math. It’s more visual somehow. Somehow, I visualize it in my head rather than to do with the numbers.

J: Where are your kids right now? Have some graduated?

H: My son is about ½ way through an engineering degree at Penn State Abington.

J: What kind of engineering?

H: He was doing general engineering, but guess what, he ran into big struggles with the math. He got as far as doing a high-level calculus course and due to some stress and the pandemic it just became too much for him and he failed it twice. So now he’s regrouping and trying to decide whether to continue on with that or whether to switch to an engineering technician degree instead which is a bit less math and a bit more hands on.

J: And what about your daughter, where is she?

H: She is at the moment taking some time off. She has some medical issues she has to work through before she can go back. So, she’s taking time out for the next semester or maybe the whole year. I’m not sure.

J: Did she graduate high school?

H: She did.

J: Okay, so she’s considering college as well?

H: Yes, she is. She actually has a 4.0 GPA

J: And how about your younger daughter?

H: She is technically in 11th grade. But she did fail a couple of courses last year due to family issues, not due to the schools’ problems. She’s sort of half way between 10th and 11th and we’ll see how that goes.

J: So, your kids have done Cyber School and the oldest two have graduated. Did you ever consider flat-out homeschooling versus Cyber School or a classroom?

H: I thought about it, but I’ve never really thought about it that seriously because having Cyber School and being supported by that just makes it that much easier. I always thought well you know; I’d really have to learn quite a few things to do homeschooling. I’ve always hung out with a bunch of people who do flat-out homeschooling, so I know a lot about it.

PANDEMIC

J: I’m just wondering if you saw any impact that pandemic schooling had on Cyberschooling?

H: Well the pandemic did not really affect us too much, certainly not academically. I think PA Cyber closed for about 2 days because Governor told all the schools to close, including them. It was ridiculous for two days for Cyber School, I mean what’s the point? I guess because they had to close all their brick and mortar places and they have offices where some of the staff usually teach from, so suddenly everybody was teaching from home and everything was done from home. But they are all capable of doing that easily. So, it just switched over and we didn’t really notice any difference.

J: Do you think there was a huge uptick in people applying for Cyber School?

H: Yes, there was. An enormous uptick! PA Cyber was completely flooded during the summer and they actually had to close enrollment. They said they had a wait list of about two thousand people, and they were at capacity with 12,000 students.

J: Wow. Well I mean it makes sense to me. Why not find virtual schooling with experts already doing it instead of the classroom teachers who suddenly have to scramble and do something they’re not prepared for?

H: That’s what everybody thought. And everybody jumped on that and tried to do it and of course they were all flooded. I think that they were capped, and they were not allowed to expand their capacity. So, when they reached capacity, that’s it. They had to close their doors to people.

J: How about the starting of this school year. Did they get more teachers and expand? H: They aren’t allowed to expand. The governor won’t let them.

J: Oh, but it’s such a perfect place

H: I know, but there’s definitely a problem between the governor and the Cyber Charter schools because he won’t let any of that kind of stuff happen and he’s known to be very opposed to Cyber School.

J: Wow, I didn’t know that. How about the school districts’ offerings? So, you’re doing the charter ones, but the school districts also offer cyber school right?

H: Right

J: Were they allowed to expand their amounts of students?

H: I don’t really know what their deal was. I don’t know much about that is all. I just know all the charter schools were capped and not allowed to expand beyond the capacity they’ve got already.

J: Don’t Cyber Schools also mail you out materials and computers and such? H: Yes, they do. They set up every student with a computer and a printer and a set of stuff that comes in a box and all the textbooks. And it all just arrives in August and then you’re ready to go and you’ve got full tech support for setting it up. Even people like me who aren’t as tech-savvy can just get on the phone with the wonderful tech support who are capable of explaining to a child about how to do stuff to get their computer up and running or whatever. It’s just awesome to have someone like that.

J: It’s a puzzle to me that there’s not more talk about Cyber Schools. I don’t even read articles about Cyber School anywhere. I mean you mention it, but I’m so surprised I don’t see people talking about it.

H: I think it’s relatively unknown and I think that a certain section of society really disapproves of it.

J: Do you think they disapprove of it because it’s not traditional brick and mortar? H: I think that has a lot to do with it. They don’t want kids stuck on their computer all the time. I think really, the screens and all the technology is a double-edged sword and it can be used for extremely good wonderful purposes or it can be totally abused and cause people all kinds of problems. Really, as human beings I think we have to learn to treat it in a respectful way and to use it for very specific uses and know when to pick it up and when to put it down. That’s really my feeling at the moment and I think that if we didn’t have all this technology and stuff this pandemic would be really, really bad.

J: I agree with you on that, because screens aren’t going away.

H: No, they are not. We are just going to have to accept that there’s nothing we can do about it. I mean, we’ve got to have a phone these days because you can’t sit outside the doctor’s office and call them if you haven’t got a phone. (laughter)