Taylor Connard

Education 650

Standard Activity 10.42B

A recent change that has been made at Clay County High School has been the move to

offer virtual learning classes through the WVELearns platform. This change was made due to the

rising concerns of Covid-19. School staff and parents were concerned that school starting back

would cause outbreaks of Covid-19, but there was also the concern that students needed to be in

school so that their basic needs could be met. In order to combat this discussion, schools began

to offer virtual courses. These virtual courses were made available to any student and are to be

facilitated by teachers at the school.

When districts began to realize that they would need to offer virtual courses, the

discussion then became what content or platform would be used to offer the courses. The initial

idea was that virtual would be offered and facilitated by educators through the West Virginia

Board of Education. District teachers would not be involved with this content and students would

solely deal with teachers other than ones in Clay. This was the thought up until school actually

started. Once school began, we quickly realized that we would not be creating the content, but

would be responsible for grading the assignments and contacting students. If we fail to contact

students on virtual, it could negatively reflect on us.

I decided to discuss this change with my fellow English teachers. The consensus is that

the online platform is hard to deal with and is too much to handle in one class period. Many

teachers are forced to work at home on the virtual platform and are not compensated for that.

Students are also struggling with the content, but the teachers have no control of the content that
is on there. There is very little support from teachers for this virtual platform. They also agreed

that it would be easier for teachers to post their own content on Google Teams. If they have the

ability to create the content, they could better serve the students.