North Canton Teen Talks About the Benefits of Online Schooling

Sometimes the high school setting isn’t for everyone.

Grace King found that early on while attending , and, instead of suffering through four years in a place she wasn’t comfortable, with people who she felt wouldn’t give her a chance, she did something.

Grace enrolled in the Ohio Connections Academy, a public virtual school where all her classes were taken online from her North Canton home. After two years, she got her diploma and now plans to attend the University of Akron in the fall.

The daughter of Teresa and Jon King of North Canton, Grace was slated to graduate from Hoover High in 2012 and worked to graduate a year early. Taking classes from home allowed her to better care for her 1-year-old daughter, Nora Bishop, and work while being a mom and student.

“I liked it, for being a mom,” Grace said. “I would choose online school again.”

She said the stress of being in a school with kids she didn’t get along with started to take its toll on her mental health, and she found it difficult to concentrate on her schoolwork.

She tried Ohio Virtual Academy, then went back to Hoover High. But after shopping around for a new online school, she and her mom both grew confident in Ohio Connections Academy. It seemed a good fit for Grace, who needed an education and classes that could be flexible to accommodate her busy schedule.

Still, Grace has had to deal with the stigma that home-schooled students and other online students face — that, for whatever reason, they just weren’t good enough to be with other kids inside a school building.

“A lot of people have misconceptions about virtual or online schooling,” Teresa said. “They think it’s for the not-well-adjusted kids. They think it’s for people who are slow. The kids who just can’t get along.”

How it works

Cleveland Heights Patch recently talked with Sean, Hannah and Rita Marie Thellian, . 

“When you try to have a lesson at a real school, like not online, you get interrupted by the kids who don’t pay attention and goof around,” 11-year-old Hannah said. “You don’t have distractions, besides things at home. You don’t have distractions from kids who don’t care about learning.”

Students like Grace, Sean and Hannah interact with the program through the Learning Management System, an online application that gives them access to all their class info, lessons, instructions and due dates. The program also features biweekly live lessons that teachers conduct via streaming video, during which students have an opportunity to ask questions, comment and get involved just like they would at a physical school.

“You can time what you’re doing daily, so you could have all algebra in a week on one day and all science the next day. Or you could have it algebra, science and social studies one day and the same the next day,” said Sean, 13. “So there isn’t a person pushing you to get it done immediately. It has a due date, but it really doesn’t have a due date.”

Being able to learn and work at your own pace is one of the benefits of an online school, said Katie Brecheisen, OCA’s statewide assistant principal for grades kindergarten through 8. The school currently has about 2,700 students enrolled.

“You’re not held back by working where everyone else is because that’s what’s being covered,” Brecheisen explained. “You have the option to slow your pace down if you need to spend a little more time making sure you’re getting a skill. Likewise, when something’s really clicking with a student, they can move forward and they can continue challenging themselves with the curriculum.”

Grace said she felt challenged by her classes, which ranged from the core coursework like English, math and science to more broad-ranging classes like French, American sign language and digital photography.

The social aspect

Rita Marie Thellian said an online school helps her kids avoid some of the negative social traps that come with a physical school (many of those that Grace experienced), especially bullying.

“I would say my son’s experience was he was not the recipient of bullying, but he saw bullying. Obviously the kids who are involved in that are used to it and are quite tolerant of that, but that’s not how we raised our kids,” she said.

Sean, a seventh-grader, said he didn’t have many friends when he went to school, but avoided being bullied because he was taller than most of the other kids.

“This is fine for me,” he said.

His sister, on the other hand, said the social aspect is something that she does miss.

“I really, really miss having recess time with my friends and just talking. That’s what I miss,” Hannah said. She hangs out with her friends on weekends and after school, but said she still would like to see them every day like she used to. OCA does offer field social events for the students to interact, including trips to the zoo or to amusement parks.

One thing Hannah said she was happy to leave behind was her peers' judgmental comments

“I couldn’t dress the way I like to,” she said. “I couldn’t wear jeans that flare, I had to wear the skinny jeans. If you wear your hair down, or if it was a little messy, you would hear about people making fun of you.”

Hannah, who is in fifth grade, said she still encounters some kids who are disruptive during live lessons, either by instant messaging other students through the live chat boards or making fun of someone’s comment. OCA fifth-grade teacher Melanie Schank said teachers have ultimate control over the chatting, so students who misbehave are sometimes messaged privately or the chatting feature is shut down.

Brecheisen said parents are contacted if students continue to misbehave and administrators can even get involved to work out a plan to correct the actions. She said parents are essential to a student’s success at an online school and have access to all their child’s lessons and grades and receive parent emails from teachers to keep them apprised of how their child is doing.

Editor's note: The full story about Hannah and Sean can be found on Cleveland Heights Patch or by clicking .