By Holly McBride
Discover what one social studies
teacher learned during her journey
from a traditional classroom to
an online learning environment.
Into the Virtual Frontier
It was a typical first week back to school at Countryside High in Clearwater, Florida, USA. On
Tuesday, I had just made final touches
to my classroom when my phone rang
and I was offered an online teaching
position that would start the following Monday. The offer was frightening
because it was beyond the familiar for
me, but it could also be an exciting
and new professional journey. Without hesitation, I decided to accept the
post and venture into the unknown.
The Virtual Classroom
Before I could begin, I had to learn
how a virtual school worked—how to
access my courses and students, and
how to create a plan of action for the
semester. Some virtual schools come
with prepackaged curricula, meaning
curriculum writers create lesson plans
and post them in the courses prior to
the first day of school. This was the
case for my school, but I was permit-ted to edit, use, or discard the lessons
at my discretion.
The weekend before my first day, I
spent countless hours surfing around
the software, emailing other teachers and administrators for assistance,
experimenting with the software’s
course design, and then homing in on
my vision for the semester. My online
teaching philosophy, course expectations, and syllabi were the foundation
for my courses.
I decided my teaching philosophy
would revolve around the asynchronous “anytime, anyplace” method and
