Welcome

Edmonds eLearning Academy:

Trials and Tribulations
of a Blended Learning School

Visit our eLearning Conference

page at: https://edmondselearningacademy.weebly.com/
 Agenda – March 1, 2018

I.Welcome and Introductions

II. A little bit about our school: Edmonds eLearning Academy- Edmonds, WA
III. Running an online accredited public high school
IV. Wrap-Up and Follow-Up with us at the conference
V. Connect with us online on our eLearning Conference site to visit our discussion
board and ask questions, connect, and download documents.
 Where We Started From…
Our school was founded as a small credit recovery program in
2007. The staff consisted of a project coordinator and two
teachers (English and History). Our student body consisted of
between 20-50 students.
 Fast Forward 10 Years…
● In June of 2017, we had a student population of 541. As of February this
year, we had over 600.
○ 508 Part-Time Students
Part-Time Students are defined as students who are taking one or more
courses with us and the rest of their courses at the traditional high school.
○ 118 Full-Time Students
Full -Time students are defined as students who are taking all of their
courses through eLearning and not attending the traditional high school.
● We have a team of 9 teachers, a counselor, registrar, office secretary, A.L.E.
coordinator, and principal.
● We are still a small school but had to adapt quickly to our growth.
*Conservative projected growth for the 2017-2018 School Year
 Our Vision
Deliver a high quality, first-rate online
program to all of our students.
 Our Vision
•We do this by:
• Supporting our students and families with compassion and flexibility to
meet their individual needs.
• Celebrating the small successes.
• Creating an atmosphere of high expectations.
• Helping students reach their educational and personal goals.
• Providing a safe and caring learning environment for all of our students.
• Instilling the belief in all students that they can be successful in school.
• Fostering important skills such as self-management and advocacy in
students that will support their goals beyond high school.
 How we are breaking from
the traditional school model?
• Our teacher supported
on-ground student
learning center
provides one-on-one
coaching and teaching
to our students.
 Our Model Continued
• Our courses are customized to engage our
students and meet their needs. We have
the ability to individualize this
customization to provide for all of our
students.
• We meet our students where they are
at both academically and emotionally.
• We have rolling enrollment and our students can take a course for any semester,
anytime they need it through the online curriculum we use.
• We provide on-ground workshop opportunities for students to engage in
hands-on learning experiences.
 What Our Model Looks Like
• Our school is part of the Edmonds School District.
• Courses can be included within the students 6 period school day, or can be
taken ‘outside’ their day for a fee.
• The majority of our students are “blended”. They take one or two courses with
eLearning and the rest of their courses at their traditional on-ground school.
• Our courses and curriculum are mastery based.
• All students go through a comprehensive orientation - the goal is to support our
students especially those who are new to online learning.
 Challenges That We
Have Encountered
• Curriculum meeting the needs of our diverse student population
• Severe credit deficiency of our students
• Family engagement/student engagement
• Attendance to our Student Learning Center
• Majority of our full time students that have anxiety/depression
• Marketing- how do we reach our district students?
 Curriculum Challenges
We started off with a curriculum that was very text based and was not
conducive to our special education and ELL populations.

• We changed over to Edgenuity after completing a thorough district

adoption. Edgenuity provides improved resources for our students.
• Video Based, Translation Tools, Close Captioning, Assignment
Calendar, online note taking, mastery based, easy to use platform.
• My Path is an amazing bonus to support all of our students in Math and
Reading.
 Credit Deficiency of Our Students
• Students often come to our school severely credit deficient.
• We work to have them move through their curriculum as quickly as
possible while still upholding our standards of mastery and rigor.
• We do this through utilizing Edgenuity’s pre-tests and
encouraging the students to utilize a faster pacing in the courses.
 Credit Deficiency of Our Students
• Graduation Rate
• Our graduation rate, while slowly climbing, is never going to be comparable to
our traditional high schools - this just isn’t our population.
• We work hard to support kids in meeting them where they are today, focusing on
their what’s next and moving them towards a productive future
• In our district we support the graduation rates of all of the other high schools
in many ways.
• 1 in 6 graduating seniors takes an eLearning course through our school as a
means to meeting their graduation requirements.
• We offer rolling enrollment so students can access credit recovery courses for
any semester at any point in the year.
 Family/Student Engagement
• We meet all of our families during an in depth orientation process.
• Our goal is to remove barriers to their education. This includes making
sure the family has food, students have transportation, a chromebook and
access to inexpensive internet.
• We also intervene early and often.
• Our struggle and next step is to truly engage our families in our processes
and elicit more feedback and decision making power in our school. We
would like to be partners in education with our families.
 Attendance in Our Student
Learning Center
• Our Student Learning Center is our classroom. We have struggled with
getting our students to attend (mainly due to high anxiety about school).
• Our attendance policy is to have all of our full-time students sign up for a
two hour time slot.
• This is their weekly scheduled time and how we take attendance.
• Students are always welcome to come in more frequently, but this time
slot affords our teachers the opportunity of knowing when students will
be on ground for targeted interventions.
 Majority of Students have
Anxiety/Depression
• A large portion of our full time online students have clinically diagnosed
anxiety/depression issues.
• These students are choosing the online learning model because the traditional
classroom model is not meeting their learning needs.
• The online learning setting removes a lot of the social anxieties that are present in a
large high school.
• Students are also able to work on their studies at times during the day/night when they
are at their best. They do not have to follow a bell-to-bell schedule.
• Many families in our district have sought out our program to support their child with
anxiety/depression issues.
 Marketing
• As educators we are used to our students coming to us. However, in the
online/blended world and as a choice school our students need to choose
us.
• Over the years, we have spent a great deal of time working with our
district leadership, school counselors, and principals to understand the
benefits of our school to their students.
• We believe it “Takes a Village” and that all students should be given the
opportunity to learn about our school as a potential educational choice.
 Thank you for joining us!

Please check out our Conference Website to connect with us and

download documents from this presentation.

https://edmondselearningacademy.weebly.com/