Peyton Online Academy and Peyton Junior/Senior High School

So, once again taking advantage of posting later than almost everyone else, I've read what those ahead of me on this lesson (Nathan, Jenni Esser, and Jen Rice at this point) did for their assignments and am taking some of what you, my gracious colleagues have produced as a starting point.

In particular, I was drawn to Jenni's own blog on creating a successful POA. I guess I'm left wondering what, exactly, we're trying to create. Organizationally, the Peyton Online Academy is a separate institution with in the district, with its own administration team, testing numbers, etc. However, we've talked about leveraging PJSHS proper as a resource for POA students. Inviting them to participate on our sports teams and in other extracurriculars, even--if I'm remembering correctly--suggesting that in future perhaps the POA kids would build their own homecoming float.

While I'm not as there in the thick of things as Jenni is, I want to make bold enough to say that there are a few more fundamental questions that have to be answered before her questions about credit recovery and the TOR's roles, etc. can be addressed.

For me these would be (1) What do we want the POA to be? and (2) What model is best to accomplish that purpose? At the moment we're far more integrated with PJSHS than our administration set up etc. suggests. We have students moving back and forth for credit recovery and study halls. All of the TOR's are PHS instructors, and by necessity and contractual obligation PHS instructors first and foremost. We (the POA) seem to be seen at the moment as a supplemental program attached at the hip to PJSHS, and as such subject to the digital coursework needs and goals of PJSHS as they see it. Hence the study halls and the credit recovery. If we're an independent entity that wants to exist on its own, than things like that, designed to serve the needs of PJSHS and students who spend the majority of their time in that building should definitely be separated and become the responsibility of the main school through some other tool set.

To my mind the truly independent POA model would have to function as a disruptive blended model--really an enhanced virtual model. Until such as time as we can hire more teachers to work directly and exclusively with those students enrolled in the POA, a hybrid or sustaining blended learning model won't work because the teacher's simply aren't available enough to make it happen. We're being given twenty hours a month to devote to this. That's not adequate to support a slipped, station rotation, or rotation model. It's not enough to support a Flex model either, because Jenni alone can't run true flex model. She's doing a fantastic imitation of that right now, and is doing better than anyone has any right to expect her to be doing, but none of us has the knowledge necessary to effectively coach/tutor/one-on-one/small-group instruct in all the subjects an effective Flex model would have to provide at a high school level. I can't teach any of the classes our Jennifers-3 teach, and I'm not going to do as well in social studies as Nathan would do, although I flatter myself that I'd do okay. So given our current enrollment numbers and shared instructors we can't really do a flex model. That leaves either the A La  Carte approach or an Enhanced Virtual approach.

I think the decision between these two formats depends on how closely tied to PJSHS we want to be.

If we (the POA) intend to be a fully separate entity, functioning as a second or alternative high school in the district, than we should go with an enhanced virtual model. At the moment given our resources that is the model we can best support. We have the students work through our designed courses at home or in the building as they please, and make ourselves available during set office hours or by appointment. In this model the TOR's would not give up their planning periods--at least not by requirement or official request--but would be available in person during fixed hours or by special arrangement with a given student. We would continue of course to be available via email for anyone who wanted to contact us--allowing for reasonable response time. In this set up PJSHS has to deal with their own credit recovery because that's not our job and those students aren't ours unless they switch over to the POA program instead of being primarily PJSHS students. The job of POA in this case is to provide a primarily virtual education, supplemented with F2F time with teachers on a weekly basis or by student arrangement. The idea would be that those students who are ours are just ours. While they may participate in PJSHS extra-curriculars much like home school students can, they are not PJSHS students per se.

If the POA is going to be, despite it's nominal separateness, an extension of PJSHS, with students moving back and forth between buildings for various purposes--credit recovery, electives offered through POA that aren't offered onsite at PJSHS, whatever--than we need to go with a very different model: the A La Carte model. the A La Carte model would allow POA to function as a Jack of All Trades within the district, providing electives that aren't otherwise available as independent study courses, credit recovery options that, being teacher created, will require some real meat and won't allow for--"oh I took my senior year off, but I can make it up with a hard week's work at this online course!," providing a full enhanced virtual curriculum for students that want their entire experience online rather than through the virtual classroom, and probably a number of other things as well.

Either way, without drastic changes in personnel and/or funding, we don't have the people and tools to implement any of the sustaining hybrid models at POA, and Flex model would be severely limited by a comparatively small number of computers and only one in-class always available instructor/tutor/coach the model requires. That leaves us, for the foreseeable future with a choice between the Enhanced Virtual and A La Carte models, and before we can choose wisely between them I think we have to decide on a clearer definition of who we are as the POA.