Our high school offers international students the opportunity to get a high-quality, American education that helps them get into the top US colleges and universities. As a small Catholic school with about 450 students in grades 9-12, we began feeling the impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic as early as March 2020 when some students chose to return home to China.
We wanted to help maintain our students’ exposure to American education, so we began offering advanced placement courses starting in the fall of 2020 to our students in China. The teacher-led online courses included numerous AP options plus English 11, English 12, US Government, and a Mandarin class (for our Chinese students who may not have a Mandarin teacher).
Offering AP courses through our online allowed our students to finish remotely wherever they were located. Our online enrollments ballooned from 50 seats annually to 180 seats for the 2020-21 academic year. More students in our local school wanted to try fully online learning. I also teach a course online as a part of my local school duties which has given me a unique perspective on the online learning experience, as a face-to-face teacher, an online teacher and as my school’s online learning site coordinator.
Here are five ways using online learning helped our students succeed before, during and now, as the pandemic continues:
- Created a welcoming environment. When I log in to teach my online class, I feel like it's a very welcoming environment. No matter if you're coming from Notre Dame Catholic High School, a public school in Texas, or a school in Africa or Europe, students feel a community connection. This doesn’t always happen in a high school in your hometown, where you’ve grown up with the same group of students, especially during a pandemic. I've had students in my poetry class say, "I've never shared my writing before, but because of the sense of community in this class, and because of the encouraging online environment, I'm sharing this with you."
- Provided more course choices. When they're juniors and seniors, our students start taking advanced courses like AP Calculus AB and BC, online from our online provider. Our school uses 25 seats a semester for our students to take the online courses. In exchange, I teach an online class to 25 different students from all over the world. When I started using the online provider’s courses, I was teaching a To Kill a Mockingbird course online as well. We don't have the space to offer something that specific in our face-to-face program of studies, but it was nice to be able to say to our incoming students, "Listen, you have the ability to make those choices."
- Prepared students for the future. Taking an online class helps students learn to be organized. The courses are collaborative and include group work and discussions, and students can practice executive function skills in an environment where their teacher is there to provide support as needed. Once they get to college, it won't necessarily be like that. So, this is a great way for them to practice their skills and see how they do and learn to be more organized and more independent in preparation for the future.
- Improved teaching skills. I volunteered to get trained as an online teacher, and this gave me the chance to teach something that no one else gets to teach in the building. As a result, I've met so many different students, improved my technology skills, and definitely enhanced my communication skills. I’m more aware of the words and even the punctuation that I use, among other nuances that you can convey face-to-face but that aren’t as easily conveyed online. My online teaching has helped me improve my face-to-face teaching too.
- Brought technology tools into the local classroom. In our online classes we conducted discussions in Google Classroom and used Google Docs for collaboration. As I used these tools and others, I started to think about ways online tools could be used locally, too. It was a great training ground and something that now carries over into my school classroom.
With a strong classroom chemistry in place pre-pandemic, a supportive online learning partner, and a full catalogue of online courses to select from, our school found we were well-positioned to succeed through the pandemic. In many ways, the online experience has strengthened our school, and we were especially pleased to continue our work with our international students. As a small independent school, we were not sure what to expect. But moving forward, I think we are better for the experience.
About the author
Jo Cipriano is an English teacher and international student coordinator at Notre Dame High School in Fairfield, CT.
