Short Walk to School
Arkansas Virtual Academy

Aug 1, 2014 | People

[title subtitle=”words: Marla Cantrell
Images: courtesy Arkansas Virtual Academy”][/title]

It’s early afternoon at the Harps’ house in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and the talk has turned to the new school year. Elizabeth and Nick will be entering the eighth grade and tenth grade, respectively. They’ve had a good summer, traveling a little, tending the family’s vegetable garden, visiting friends.

When they do get back to their studies, they’ll be learning at home, under the watchful eye of their mother and designated learning coach, Shelly. An estimated 3.4% of students in this country, between the ages of five and seventeen, are homeschooled.

What makes Elizabeth and Nick unique is that they’ll be attending Arkansas Virtual Academy (ARVA), a home-based public charter school that started in the 2002-2003 school year, when it opened under a federal grant. In 2007, it became an open-enrollment public charter school. At the time of this writing, there were approximately 1,200 students enrolled in the academy. ARVA teachers oversee around sixty students each, with the help of learning coaches, the designated adults (parents, grandparents, legal guardians) who work directly with the students they oversee, day in and day out. The program uses books, online materials, and virtual classrooms that operate much like Skype or Google Hangouts. Students follow the public school calendar, taking holiday and summer breaks.

This school year the academy has grown (last year it was K-8), adding ninth and tenth grades. Their goal is to add eleventh grade in 2015-2016, and twelfth grade the following school year. There is a waitlist for students who were not enrolled in an Arkansas public school during the first three quarters of the prior school year.

According to Scott Sides, ARVA’s Head of School, the perks to this kind of learning are plentiful. It allows parents to work with teachers to individualize a learning program based on standardized test scores, the students’ interests, academic needs and strengths. He emphasizes the importance of the learning coach, their commitment to the students, and their role in helping the program succeed.

If that kind of commitment is key, then the Harps are the model family. Parents Shelly and Ray do almost everything with their kids, including working together in the family’s cleaning business. They are active in their church, and that’s where they find many of the extra-curricular activities for Elizabeth and Nick. They’re also old hands at homeschooling. Shelly researched the idea for four years before finally implementing it when Nick finished sixth grade. At that time, though, they didn’t know about Arkansas Virtual Academy, and Shelly found it difficult. “I didn’t have the support of a teacher like I do with ARVA,” Shelly says.

After that first year, they did find a private homeschooling program that worked better for Nick, and last year they enrolled Elizabeth in ARVA. (Nick was too old at the time, since the academy hadn’t yet added the ninth grade.) At first, Elizabeth feared she’d not make friends, but that hasn’t been the case. “I have lots of friends,” Elizabeth says, and then laughs. “One of the girls I met is in a band. And she has purple hair. That’s just so neat. Some of my friends are from Little Rock and Fayetteville.”

One of the things the family likes is that students must prove they understand a lesson before moving on. “They have to make at least eighty percent before they can advance,” Shelly says. “I like that, that I’m sure they’re learning the material, and I like that I communicate by email with the teacher each day.”

Since academic success depends on online interaction, it’s critical to have a reliable computer, and ARVA helped with that. Elizabeth qualified for a loaner computer. She also received packages with items needed for art, and science experiments. Elizabeth smiles, “That was one of my best days, getting the art kit. Art’s my favorite subject, followed by science.”

Elizabeth describes her routine. She does Zumba, a dance-based exercise program, each morning. She eats breakfast, gets dressed for school, and goes to her workspace. “Well,” she admits, “Nick and I do have to get dressed but we don’t have to wear shoes, which I really like!” Once she starts her computer, she checks into her classroom, logs the time she showed up, and begins working.

Shelly doesn’t see herself as a teacher, but she does believe she’s working as an educational team with the kids, staying connected at least in part because they are using their house as a classroom. “We do everything together,” Shelly says. “We work together all the time. We’re extremely involved in our church. They do their homework at the same time, and they’ve even been able to help each other.” Nick chimes in, “Elizabeth was able to answer a question I had about math last year, and I helped her when she had questions about science.”

And Nick knows a lot about science. He’s immensely interested in archaeology and paleontology, something he’s considering pursuing after high school. Elizabeth loves photography and travel, so she’s looking at careers that incorporate both.

But for now, their focus is on this school year. They love the flexibility of the virtual classroom, and they appreciate having their mother as their learning coach. As for Shelly, she loves that she gets to be with her kids every day, a gift she doesn’t take for granted. She also loves that she knows the details of what and how they’re learning, how they’re progressing every day, and that their education, like everything else the Harps do, is a family effort.


To learn more about Arkansas Virtual Academy,

visit www.k12.com/arva.

Nationwide — 3.4% of students between the ages of 5 – 17 learn at home. The U.S. Department of Education reports 1,770,000 school age children are now homeschooled.

Arkansas — 17,215 are homeschooled (numbers from arkansased.org, 2012-2013)

Locally — Sebastian County: 636. Crawford County: 412. Washington County: 1,211. Benton County: 2,000.

Do South Magazine

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