In the Zone This Month: May 2009
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Managing Teachers in a Virtual World
by Tisha Green Rinker
The continuum of online course delivery requires a unique set of skills not only from students, but from teachers as well.
The emergence of online education has led to an increasing number of teachers venturing into a new field of teaching. Virtual course offerings have expanded in K-12 education, and now these programs can be found in many states. The continuum of online course delivery requires a unique set of skills not only from students, but from teachers as well. The struggle for principals is in the management of teachers in this developing role.
Virtual schooling programs vary from district to district and state to state. School districts’ reasons for offering online courses differ, but may include increasing their abilities to remediate students and to supplement their current curriculum. The delivery of online courses can take place in several ways. Students can be enrolled in online courses in which they work within a school building with a teacher, but complete the curriculum online. Another scenario is that students complete online coursework from an offsite location, but report to the school building periodically for tests or simply to check in with a teacher. Other virtual programs operate exclusively via the Internet, and students’ contact with teachers is completely through phone, e-mail, and live synchronous teaching sessions delivered over the Internet. The variation of program type and delivery creates a new perspective on how we manage the teachers of these courses and how performance reviews and professional development are conducted. This article focuses on the management of teachers working in an independent virtual school program.
Being a principal in a virtual school program has similarities to and differences from the administration of a brick-and-mortar school. A principal is still the instructional leader and primary decision maker for the school and its staff. But how do you manage teachers in a virtual classroom? How do you give feedback to a teacher on his or her performance? How do you identify the needs of a teacher whose students are spread across the state?
Teacher Management and Support
In a brick-and-mortar school a principal may set up times in which s/he observes the teachers in the building. The principal records data pertaining to the lesson delivered, content knowledge, and classroom management, among other things. The principal also ensures that the teacher has the tools needed to implement their lessons—desks for students, books, blackboard, etc. In a virtual environment the teaching tools and needs are different.
Technology
In a virtual school, teachers either work in an office or from home. The tools necessary to perform daily tasks include a computer with Internet access, telephone access, and other devices such as headsets and web cams for synchronous lessons delivered to students. A principal must also make certain that the technology within the learning management system is working correctly for teachers and students. Although the principal is not the person to provide enhancements in this arena, s/he must advocate for these enhancements when needed.
Communication is a crucial component to the success of students in a virtual school.
Communication
Principals must foster an environment of open communication within the school. This includes communication between teacher and principal, teacher to teacher, and teachers to students and families. The communication between the principal and teachers can vary depending on the physical location of the teacher, but in general takes place via e-mail or phone individually and in a group setting during staff meetings. Weekly staff meetings are an important time for the principal to give updates on important policies and events that affect staff and students. Individual meetings take place a minimum of three times per year for performance reviews, but should take place more often in the event that a teacher is having a difficult time acclimating to the virtual environment. Identifying the teachers who are having difficulty is addressed later.
Communication between teachers is a crucial component to the success of students in a virtual school. Teachers from different grade levels or subject areas often share students from the same family. Open dialogue among teachers as to challenges faced by students often fosters an increasingly supportive environment for the students, improving their chances of successful learning. On a similar note, regular communication between students and families is equally important. If a teacher cannot communicate with a family effectively and consistently, there is little way of knowing if a student is learning or how the school can help a student overcome the barriers to learning.
Daily Tasks
Daily tasks for an online teacher include communicating with students, delivering online lessons, and grading. Similar to a brick-and-mortar school, principals must make sure that the number of students in a teacher’s class does not prohibit the completion of these tasks. Student-to-teacher ratio is admittedly different than it would be in a traditional setting. However, consensus has not been reached on ideal numbers. It is evident that the appropriate ratio differs based on grade level and subject area. A principal has several accountability measures that s/he can use to monitor a teacher’s progress. Examining the number of assignments a teacher needs to grade and the number of contacts a teacher has had with each student for whom the teacher has primary responsibility are two ways in which accountability can be monitored. When numbers continually increase, the principal needs to first communicate with the teacher and then decide whether the graded assignments that are outstanding are due to an overload in responsibility or an external issue with the teacher.
Evaluating Teachers
Just as there are standards for teachers in the brick-and-mortar schools, national standards have been created for online teaching (NACOL, 2008). The standards include meeting state licensing requirements, prerequisite technology skills, plans to incorporate active learning in an online environment, online leadership skills, legal and ethical behavior, online experience from the student perspective, response to students with special needs, implementing online assessments and other assignments according to state standards, use of data, assessing student progress, and teacher collaboration. These standards are used to create performance review rubrics by which we can rate whether a teacher is functioning well in the role. These standards, along with a teacher’s personal professional goals, are taken into consideration for yearly performance ratings. A principal should meet with a teacher at the beginning of the year to assist in setting or approving the goals, during midyear to evaluate whether goals completion is progressing, and at the end of year for the final evaluation.
As previously mentioned, the principal measures the effectiveness of an online teacher using several accountability measures. A more difficult item to measure is a teacher’s communication skills. The ability to communicate skillfully with families, colleagues, and administrators is critical in this environment. Further, a teacher must be able to document communications with families accurately. The principal should monitor all of these activities.
The principal must also function as an instructional leader in the virtual environment. This is accomplished by observing teachers in their instructional delivery. In this setting a teacher’s instruction is through live synchronous teaching sessions delivered over the Internet. The principal should sit in on the live session and observe student engagement, the teacher’s management of the “classroom,” and how well s/he sets and executes the objectives for the lesson. Ideally, the principal would then meet with the teacher to give him/her feedback on the live session and suggestions for improvement.
Professional Development
Offering professional development to online teachers offers its own set of challenges. There are two primary factors to think about: delivery method and topics/resources. A staff of online teachers often does not work in one physical location. Teachers may be working from home, in offices in multiple locations, or a combination of the two. For this reason it is beneficial to offer inservice opportunities face to face so that teachers can get together to collaborate. However, getting a large staff together from long distances can be difficult and costly. Offering online professional development opportunities can be easier to organize and more economical, but most important it gives teachers the first-hand experience of gaining knowledge in a virtual environment themselves.
The topics for professional development for online teachers are often similar to their brick-and-mortar counterparts, but different in the way teachers will implement the knowledge presented. For this reason it is hard to find individuals to present information to virtual teachers because they are usually coming from a face-to-face environment. Comparatively speaking, there is much less research on interventions with virtual students and teachers than with their brick-and-mortar counterparts. As a principal you can recognize and embrace this fact by encouraging teachers to collect data on the interventions they are using and either publish or present their findings at local, state, or national education conferences.
A principal’s leadership role in the virtual environment has similarities to and differences from the brick-and-mortar counterpart. S/he is still acting as an instructional leader for the staff, interacting with families, dealing with behavior issues, examining test data, and making decisions about school-wide goals. The methods by which these functions are carried out in this setting can be drastically different. With the rise of online education an increasing number of administrators may need to develop a new set of skills for virtual teacher management.
North American Council for Online Learning (NACOL). (2008). National Standards for Quality Online Teaching. http://www.inacol.org/resources/nationalstandards/index.php
Tisha Green Rinker is School Programs Manager of Connections Academy, a K–12 virtual public school.
