Classroom teachers instinctively understand the impact of a first impression. They greet students as they walk through the door and carefully plan the first days’ work to ensure a strong foundation for the learning to come. They know, too, that the space they teach in also communicates their values, from the way they arrange their classroom furniture to the posters they hang on the walls. 

So when teachers become Academic Leaders, they know how important first interactions are to shaping their relationships with faculty, staff, students and families. At the same time, they have a much smaller range of direct interactions with stakeholders than classroom teachers do. To set the tone for the new year, Academic Leaders need to approach the start of school by acting with intention–one of our key Competencies for Academic Leaders. 

1. Be as transparent as possible. Trusted leaders are effective leaders. When you explain how you gather information, set priorities, and make decisions, you focus on the process of making decisions, not your outcomes. Academic Leaders know that almost every decision has its detractors, but if people understand your process, they can often accept a decision they disagree with. 
2. Talk about your values. Humans use stories to make sense of the world–and if the world doesn’t make sense, they create stories that construct sense. Academic Leaders  make decisions every day that impact an entire school community. Sometimes, your choices are based on information that’s available to few of your colleagues (and none of your students). These are the moments when you can’t be transparent.  As a result, the stakeholders in your community can superimpose a narrative on your choices that misinterprets your actions. When you talk explicitly about your values, you articulate the context and motivation for your decisions. In other words, if you tell the story that gives meaning to your actions, you build trust with your community.
3. Choose one small action that puts your values into practice. It is a truism that actions speak louder than words. As an Academic Leader, however, much of the action you take happens in small meetings and one-to-one conversations. While the impact of your decisions is felt every day, your actions often go unseen. At the start of the year, commiting to a concrete action that makes your values visible is a powerful way to lead. One head of school sees his primary mission as creating a sense of belonging. Every morning for fifteen minutes, he greets students arriving on campus with a handshake, transforming the moment into a ritual of recognition and acknowledgement. Another Academic Leader, committed to creating a culture of intellectual curiosity and inquiry, begins every faculty meeting with a poem. As these small actions are repeated, they bring meaning and purpose to a community.

Every summer we get phone calls from Academic Leaders stuck in staffing limbo. “I’ve been trying to hire for this position since March,” they say, “but we can’t find a candidate we feel confident about. Do you have room for…?” and then they ask us about six, or fourteen, or forty students, who need to enroll in courses like AP Calculus BC, or three different levels of Mandarin Chinese, or Anatomy and Kinesiology. 

In situations like these, our first goal is to articulate the elements that create a successful online partnership between schools and supplemental programs. At One Schoolhouse, successful partnerships rely on clarity, communication, and shared understanding.

We know there are three things Academic Leaders can do from the start of our partnership that will set their students up for success.

Stand behind your decision
Online learning may not have been your first choice, and it’s okay to acknowledge that. However, once you’ve made the decision to move a course online, you need to communicate that it is your best choice, and your school is fully behind this partnership. If Academic Leaders use language like “regrettably,” “last resort” or “experiment” (and we’ve seen all of these!), they communicate that their school lacks faith in the partner. Instead, be sure to communicate that your online partner is trusted and expert. At One Schoolhouse, we provide schools with information like a college matriculation list, a list of our consortium schools, and information about our teachers. All of these help to convince students and families that we share their school’s commitments to creating challenging courses, hiring expert instructors, and engaging with students.

Open all your communication channels
When a school moves a course online, our first move is to urge the school to schedule an informational webinar for students and families. In the meeting, we explain what online learning looks like when it’s purpose-built. We walk students and families through our weekly learning cadence and explain course competencies and objectives. We also answer their questions about online learning, how we’ll work together with their school, and how we support students if they run into challenges. Over time, we’ve noticed that students whose schools do webinars tend to do better than students from schools who decline our offer. 

Stay in touch with our Student Success Team
Acclimating to an online course is a bit different from settling into a traditional class. Students have a lot of experience in physical classrooms. They’ve worked with different teachers and a wide range of resources. When they run into a challenge, they know there’s another way to do things. Online, however, when students hit a snag, they tend to assume that the problem is not specific to an assignment or topic, but instead inherent to online learning, and they follow that reasoning to the conclusion of “I can’t learn online.” They’re wrong! Everybody can learn online… they just need to learn a few new strategies. Our Student Success team–Delinda Hyde and Charnelle Lyles–are experts in working with students and schools. If students are struggling or frustrated, contact the Student Success team right away. We can provide you and your students with information and strategies that can support progress and boost performance.

Want to know more about enrolling students in One Schoolhouse courses? Contact our office at 202-618-3637 or email [email protected].​

Things get interesting, however, when we start to move down the list of additional accommodations. That’s because our course design standards were built with attention to guidelines from Universal Design for Learning (UDL). UDL guidelines are designed to help educators “change the design of the environment rather than to change the learner. When environments are intentionally designed to reduce barriers, all learners can engage in rigorous, meaningful learning.” At One Schoolhouse, we believe that online learning should be designed to be accessible to all, and that all learners benefit from intentional structure and increased choice. As a result, our course design standards incorporate many of the most frequently used accommodations in traditional classrooms.

For example, consider the accommodation of alternative instruction formats. A student who has difficulty processing auditory information may need outlines or notes provided in a typical classroom. In a One Schoolhouse course, they can choose a pathway that uses text. At its most traditional, that could mean a textbook reading. Another option might include a recorded slide deck that integrates the teacher’s spoken words with an outline on the screen. A student who finds visuals especially helpful might select a video pathway. 

Online learning can be a game-changer for students who have difficulty managing the physical environment of a traditional classroom. Preferential seating, for example, simply doesn’t exist in the online space–every student has a front-row seat. For students who struggle to manage attention and avoid distraction, online learning offers the opportunity to manage the environment by selecting their own workspace. (What about students for whom the device itself is the distraction? There are a host of apps to help with both Mac and Chrome operating systems.) Students who need to take breaks on campus often find themselves forced to choose between taking the break they need and missing essential classroom time. Not so in an asynchronous course, which allows students to manage their time in the way that works best for them.