Recommended
More Related Content
Viewers also liked
Viewers also liked (17)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
As the World Turns: Spinning a Virtual School into a Vibrant Global Community
- 1. As the World Turns: Spinning a Virtual School into a Vibrant Global Community
- 2. Meet the Presenters Katie Mussachio – K-12 Assistant Principal – Masters of Education from University at Buffalo Hannah Rinehart – iNaCA Director – Masters of Educational Leadership from Western Govenors
- 4. The School
- 5. The School
- 6. Building Community iSHARE Student Spotlight in the Newsletter End of Semester Awards Celebrations Reader’s Theatre AND Around the World in 60 Minutes
- 7. The Project
- 8. The Project
- 10. The World Tour
- 11. Where have we gone? Pennsylvania Quebec Anguila Italy Germany Ukraine New Mexico Canary Islands Ireland Poland Djbouti South Africa Japan Wyoming Louisiana Bulgaria Saudi Arabia Malaysia Australia Colorado New York St. Kitts Brazil Egypt
- 12. Hits Clip Enjoy! Around the World Clips
- 13. Where have we gone?
- 14. I am iNaCA
- 15. I am iNaCA I Celebrate! I"celebrate"Ugly%Sweater%Time"with"Family" I"am"iNaCA" • • • Ugly%Sweater%Crea- on% That’s'a'bird’s'nest' Stuffed'animal'head'
- 16. I am iNaCA I am iNaCA – I am from Message board posts Traveling Starboy Around the World Around the World follow up event with contest
- 17. I am iNaCA I am from Message board posts Traveling Starboy Around the World Where do I call home? Video
- 18. Results Found student strengths Encourages students’ social engagement Celebrate our community and our students
- 19. Looking Forward Service Learning – Homelessness Facts Video – National Honor Society T-Fund – Global Innovations (Video) – Make a difference challenges We365.com GT Science Challenge – National Junior Honor Society Toy Drive – National English Honor Society Book Drive (Video)
- 20. Looking Forward Career Readiness STEM (Video) Honor Societies Leadership Opportunities
- 21. Looking Forward Adapting Leadership Opportunities
- 22. Thank you! Hannah Rinehart hrinehart@connectionseducation.com Katie Mussachio kmussachio@connectionseducation.com
Editor's Notes
- Hannah
- Hannah, Katie
- HANNAH Students in the graduating Class of 2015 exceeded SAT and ACT national averages and its AP scores exceeded the global average. Students experienced a 100 percent graduation rate, a 100 percent college acceptance rate, and earned more than $2.7 million in scholarships.
- KATIE: iNaCA is part of the larger network of schools that falls under Connections Learning and Connections Education. As such, our students are also invited to participate in the Connections Academy clubs. While this offers our students rich opportunities and many students participate in these clubs, anecdotal observations from the students consist of feelings that the other students know each other and attend the same Connections Academy School and that they are the sole International Connections Academy student in the club. Additionally, these clubs are run by the Connections Academy staff, and do not foster the International Connections Academy community.
- HANNAH: International Connections Academy served students from 48 states and 44 countries during the 2015-2016 school year. Originally we were National Connections Academy, but the 13-14 school year marked the official establishment of the school as International Connections Academy. Now that the school is global, the students are all around the world, increasing the school’s need for deliberate and focused planning to offer opportunities for school community. While teachers do offer synchronous classes, there is still a need for additional opportunities to allow for school community. Which leads us to our guiding question: what does a global community look like?
- KATIE As an international, online school, our teachers and counselors strive to connect with our students, getting to know them, their learning habits and strengths. During our first year as iNaCA, we created deliberate opportunities for our students to share. We had our first Around the World event and, that first year we also added a monthly event called iSHARE, which stands for iNaCA Students Having Academically Reflective Experiences—really it is just show and tell for high school students where they share drawings, poems, schools essays and projects they are proud of, recorded songs, and just about anything else you can imagine. I started a Reader’s Theatre group with another teacher in the style of old-time radio with dramatic organ music, cheesy sound effects and all. Starting with Around the World in 60 Minutes we began to see those connections form and our global community started to develop.
- Hannah: One of the first steps that we took in developing the Around the World Program was to get the students involved. We kept an eye out for students from different parts of the world, and teachers held a meeting to brainstorm with those initial students what they think other students would be interested in learning about. It was important that the presentations were authentic and engaging, and the input from the students was invaluable.
- Katie Around the World in 60 Minutes started out as a one-time event. However, before the original event was even over, I had this message in my in-box, “Mrs. Mussachio, I want to present at the next Around the World event”. What? There was no next event planned! But, in the next couple of days, I received additional similar messages, so we met with our new recruits, shared the guidelines that the first handful of presenters developed added additional points of interest and planned Around the World: The Journey Continues. During both events, individual students created a PowerPoint or video about their country, and then presented to the iNaCA audience. Since these first assemblies, additional international and domestic students have expressed interest in presenting each year, and the reputation for the event sells itself. We no longer need to seek out students. They seek us out! We’ve found that it is the simple things that give the students in the audience the greatest thrill. And food. We all love to hear about the delicious food from around the world!
- HANNAH After the student presenters wow the audience with their multimedia presentations, we have a group Q&A session. The event is hosted in a virtual meeting room, and at the end of the presentations, we pull up a chat pod for each presenter. This allows for a nice flow of questions to be typed, while perhaps one of the presenters is answering another question. It’s during the Q&A where our school community grows and shines. The students are thirsty to hear about the lives of the presenters. Do you have pets? What is your favorite place to bring a visitor? Do you speak another language? And “I like your accent” shows up in the chat pods a few times too.
- KATIE The students awe at the unique qualities of each new location we visit, but the real excitement happens when the commonalities become apparent. Milk in a bag instead of carton? Fascinating. A burger with a fried egg on it from McDonalds? Amazing! But wait…you actually have McDonalds there? Who knew?!
- HANNAH We’ve visited 24 unique locations so far, on 6 out of 7 continents. Our presenters have honored us by sharing a glimpse into their culture, and our student and faculty audience have created extensive travel lists, but more importantly, have made connections to the world outside of their home. As Around the World and other events continued to grow, we began to see something wonderful. The students greet each other as they enter the virtual classroom, waiting for the events to begin, and the students cheer each other on. Relationships have been built and we are successful in achieving the vision of the global community of learners.
- KATIE Alternate youtube link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBFEXhUmbhY
- KATIE Through the “Around the World” events, the students realize just how unique each of them is, and they relish in that, while at the same time taking note of their similarities. They each have their hopes, dreams, families, friends, and traditions. The “Around the World” program introduces students to a life outside of their house, and encourages them to embrace other cultures and celebrate each other. The Around the World events have started to define iNaCA. Who are we? We are iNaCA!
- HANNAH We are lucky to have a talented marketing department working at iNaCA, and the theme presented for this year has been a school spirited I am iNaCA! We started the year asking students to define themselves through asynchronous posts and discussions in our school message boards. . I am a Soccer loving Mom; I am iNaCA, I posted proudly our message boards. I am a dancer, I am a Dr. Who fan, I am a soccer player, I am iNaCA students declared. To coincide, with Thanksgiving, students posted 10 second video clips saying their thanks.
- KATIE Our students had been so engaged in the I am, and I am thankful for conversations, when one eager student asked when the next Message Board was opening up, we paused. Much like how we did not anticipate the original Around the World in 60 minutes event to be repeated, we thought that having limited I Am prompts would work well for our students. Well, they want more so we opened the I celebrate message board, and in addition to students uploading their two slide ppt to the message boards, they were presented during the December iSHARE, giving us an impromptu mini Around the World of celebrations and customs.
- HANNAH The spring semester marked the beginning of the chant “I am from”, which I’m sure you can imagine, pairs up perfectly with with Around the World in 60 minutes! We led the students to a printable “Starboy” the Connections mascot, and ask them to take Starboy on a tour of the students’ hometowns. Our first Around the World of the Spring followed the traditional format of student presentations. However, because we allow for presentation time and question time in those events, we are only able to have 5-6 students present.
- KATIE So, we really want to get many, many more students involved presenting and sharing about their area, and for the 2nd Around the World event in the spring, we invited the students that take picture of Starboy in their home town to present their picture. During our Spring event, we gathered pictures from the message board for this video: http://ww3.livelesson.com/p786jxrj9ko/ Instead of featuring only a handful of students, our students were able to a-synchronously upload pictures into our message boards, interact with each other through the threads, and then also see a compilation of the pictures at the live event.
- HANNAH The combination of our efforts, Around the World, iSHARE show and tell events, the I am iNaCA message, along with our other special events and student leadership groups, has all melded together to create something wonderful. As a staff, we have found student strengths. A particular student comes to mind, Christian. He is a good student, and is a self-proclaimed “you-tuber”. The message boards gave him an avenue to share his message. Once in a while, we will log into the message boards and find that he has posted a gem. A message to students to relax during exams, or to remember how awesome each of them is. Social engagement is up---let me tell you about Vincent. Vincent who probably didn’t say a word in the synchronous lessons, but through the discovery of his love for magic and unique harmonic playing abilities, was featured during iSHARE, felt the celebration and encouragement from his classmates, and he has now joined Reader’s Theatre and shares his writing in his English class.
- KATIE Our students and teachers have a great time collaborating in our school community, and truly it’s just plain fun sometimes. And we’ve seen the payoff with academic engagement because of the focused efforts as well. But where are we going in the future? You saw from one of our opening slides, that our academics are spot on. But to be impactful-- to make a difference in the world, our focus in creating this global community needs to be more than just academics. As such, we are exploring what service learning looks like. How can we contribute within our own communities as well as the iNaCA community. So we presented the challenge to the students. One exciting project our students participated in this Spring was a Global Innovations group where the students were asked to make suggestions for the world’s garbage problem. The students got together, came up with a solution, participated in global collaboration and wrote a script to create a public service announcement. The result is admittedly adorable, and informative: http://ww3.livelesson.com/p47cy43wvli/ One of the many very cool things about iNaCA is that we have students all around the world! That means that when our students participate in a project, it is truly GLOBAL! We saw this when our National English Honor Society group hosted a book drive this Spring and collected almost 2000 books. A central collection location was cost prohibitive, so we asked that students bring their books to a location in their area where they would make a difference. And of course we had the kids post book selfies with their donations in the message boards! http://ww3.livelesson.com/p16w3n6zmzk/ As we told the students: The impact of one individual might not seem significant. But what happens when 800 iNaCA students band together? Real change.
- HANNAH We have developed our community to offer the full school experience, fostering our students to celebrate their talents, embrace leadership opportunities, and start thinking about their world beyond iNaCA. STEM is not just a buzz word here. We have a dedicated lead teacher that is developing STEM opportunities for our students, and we are excited to offer our first STEM fair in just two weeks. Catapult video http://ww3.livelesson.com/p56t1mnj0dy/ And our gifted and talented lead teacher has invited professionals from a variety of different areas to speak with the students. Students have heard from a pediatrician, an American executive chef working in Australia, a food scientist and more! Last week, our National English Honor Society students were treated to a VIP session with author RL McDaniel-pictured- before he spoke with the whole school.
- KATIE And our students are taking the lead and making this global community one that they own with pride. Our iSHARE events have a student emcee, a recent Earth day event featured a debate on GMOs that the students felt passionately about, and our recent Reader’s Theatre production was student led, student written, and student performed. As our global community becomes stronger and more robust, the students continue to adapt. Tomorrow, I will be take a lunch break from this conference to attend our first annual prom. This has been something the students have wanted for a couple of years, and tomorrow it happens: photo booth, dance room and all. And I can’t wait to see the prom pictures that the Student Council has collected from our staff. A phrase I’m starting to hear more often is: “if you can do it in Brick and Mortar, we can make it happen at iNaCA” ---and lots of time, even better!
- HANNAH Because we have families around the world, we are in a unique position to make our school community a global community. Our students are dispelling misconceptions, embracing other cultures, and making friends on the other side of the globe. The engagement with our students is the highlight of our jobs, and it’s astonishing how much the teachers have learned as well. Thank you for letting us share, as this is truly a topic we enjoy speaking about!