Online High Schools: Kicking Off the School Year Right

If you've enrolled your student in online high school for the first time, you may be wondering what the beginning of the school year is going to look like for you. How will you arrange your schedule to accommodate the changes necessary for going back to school? How will you keep your teenager on task? If you want to ensure success for your student's online high school career, try out some of these tips.

Create a Schedule

At a brick and mortar school, there is a chunk of class time devoted to each subject. The same should be true for your student when attending online high school. While they may not need the entire chunk of time, they should understand that they need to be on task during that time. Try not to schedule other things during the hours that your student typically spends on schoolwork. You want to make it clear that school is still a priority, even though your teenager is no longer attending a brick and mortar school.

Try Not to Be a Distraction

When you're at home with your student during the day, it's easy to create distractions. You want to run out and do some shopping or grab ice cream. You need help finishing a task. While the occasional deviation from the norm is all right, if you change things up too frequently, you give your student the impression that school isn't really a priority in your home anymore.

Provide the Necessary Materials

Obviously, the first thing you need for online high school is a computer with all of the necessary software installed. Make sure that you have speakers and a microphone. You should also have the materials that your student will need in order to successfully complete school assignments. Does your student need graph paper or a graphing calculator? What about art supplies to complete a poster or larger project? As many of these supplies as possible should be on hand and easily accessible for your student during the school day.

Keep Your Student Accountable

Here's the biggest difference between attending online school and attending a brick and mortar school: you have to pay more attention to how your student is doing, not just on a monthly basis or when reports come out, but every day. Find a system that works for you and your student, but make sure that you're keeping them accountable. Some students are responsible enough that this means checking over their completed work every week or so. Others require that you stay up to date with what they've been doing every day.

It's very tempting for students who attend school online to get off track. Just like students in a brick and mortar school who spend more time writing notes to their friends or sending text messages than actually engaging in schoolwork, students who attend school online have many distractions pulling at them throughout the day. It's your job to monitor your student to ensure that these distractions don't have a negative impact on their education.

Initiate Communication

Your child's teacher isn't someone that you can walk up and introduce yourself to at school anymore. You can, however, initiate regular contact with your child's teacher and make it clear that you are an involved, concerned parent who wants what is best for your child. By initiating this contact, you let the teacher know that you're interested in further information about your child and make them more likely to let you know if they've caught a problem you've missed.

Online high school is a new and different world. It's a wonderful opportunity for many students, but it's also a very different way of learning. Staying involved with the process, especially in the early days, will help ensure your student's success.