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An inside look at Guilford County Schools Virtual Academies

Thousands of students will learn from home through the two online schools but how do they work and what will they learn?

GREENSBORO, N.C. — Registration for Guilford County School's virtual academies is officially closed. The two online schools are the only option for kids who want to continue remote learning when students return to classrooms. 

"We are at home," Lysni Ingram and Kaitlyn Bacon proclaimed in unison on a Zoom call. Both are familiar with virtual communication, they're teaching from classrooms inside of their homes as part of Guilford County Schools all-new virtual academies. 

Ingram Teaches STEM and Bacon teaches fourth grade. Both use live and pre-recorded lessons to deliver the same curriculum taught in GCS schools.

"They're getting the same thing they get in our classrooms in a brick and mortar school and we were all brick and mortar teachers up until this point," Bacon said.

At the start of the year all students learned online. If parents wanted their kids to continue with remote learning they had to enroll them in one of two virtual academies. That meant transferring out of their original school for at least the remainder of the semester, if not the year. 

"We are not just some foreign virtual school we are a GCS school and we develop those relationships and with us being virtual were even more intentional with you know developing those relationships," Ingram said.

Students can complete the 15 to 30 hours of school work each week at their own pace and on their own time. Both Ingram and Bacon say the feedback from students and parents has been overwhelmingly positive and they feel like everyone is more engaged.

"It's funny with middle schoolers because they don't always come right out and say, 'Oh, I like this lesson,'" Ingram said. "I know I'm doing a good job if every time we have a life lesson and their cameras on I'm like, 'oh they want me to see them yay we're having fun.'"

Aside from tech issues, both teachers think the virtual academy is already a well-oiled machine.

"One thing that's been thrown around a lot about the virtual school is building this plane as we fly it," Ingram said. "But we don't see it as that, I believe we are a jet and we are taking off into the future of education and every day we are soaring higher and higher ."

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