Virtual Classroom Set-up is About Striking a Balance

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Sept. 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- An in-person classroom elicits a reaction from students, from its desk layout to how the wall space is utilized. A student attending National Heritage Academies' PrepNet Virtual Academy instead responds to a background generated by an electronic program or even the teacher's in-home pet.

PrepNet teachers still spend time writing on whiteboards and paper to direct scholars, but the physical aspect of setting up a classroom isn't as extensive by virtue of not having to move tables and chairs. There's isn't as much time and energy devoted to buying and preparing physical materials for four walls, as commanding the attention of the class is condensed to a single wall behind a teacher's screen or a streamlined learning platform.

"You have a lot less issues to worry about and your physical environment becomes your canvas or your Google classroom," said Brynn Jackson, a PrepNet high school biology teacher. "It's a very big amount of time shaved off, but you deposit that right back into your online classroom."

Avoiding a distracting background that also contains relevant material is a fine line, said Jackson, who has taught virtually for the past three years. Sometimes she sits in front of a bookshelf adorned with the school colors (navy blue, cyan, green), and other times has used an electronic program with modified backgrounds.

"I've had really busy backgrounds for elementary kids and I've had really plain ones for the older students," she said. "The age of your students, the physical space that you're sitting in, your personal choices, your school colors, the subject that you teach, all of those factor into what you want to look at or what you want the kids to see behind you."

Distractions such as a wandering pet strolling into view of a teacher's camera might seem unwelcome, but students in Fifth-grade Teacher Reiney Brandt's class connected to her cat, Murphy, which wouldn't have been possible in-person.

"It was always fun to have her to show up every so often," she said. "She's usually quiet, but it was always fun to see her if it's during asynchronous (your own schedule) time."

Kindergarten Teacher Jessica Kraft's students have no prior classroom experience, so she eschews virtual backgrounds because she uses a lot of hand motions. Setting up things such as bitmoji classrooms or instructional videos for parents is essential.

"You have to be purposeful and intentional about how you are explaining what school is for parents because they do a lot of the legwork of making sure they have a learning space," Kraft said. "You have to come up with all of those procedures and make sure that you're clear with parents what the expectation is."

NHA is a network of 98 tuition-free, public charter schools across nine states, serving more than 60,000 students in kindergarten through 12th grade. For more information, visit nhaschools.com.

SOURCE National Heritage Academies