#41 BOLD Moves: How Virtual Schools Are Redefining Education in Florida with Mandy Perry

In this episode of the Why Distance Learning? Podcast, hosts Seth Fleischauer, Allyson Mitchell, and Tami Moehring welcome Mandy Perry, a virtual school principal and president of the Blended and Online Learning Discovery (BOLD) of Florida Executive Board. Mandy shares her journey in virtual education, her leadership role in BOLD, and how virtual schools in Florida are evolving to meet the needs of students across the state.

Key topics discussed include:

• The Birth of BOLD: Mandy shares the origins of BOLD, an organization created to support virtual school leaders in Florida. She explains how it has grown to become a vital resource for 67 public virtual school districts, offering collaboration, professional development, and legislative advocacy.
• Virtual Schools vs. State Virtual Schools: Mandy explains the differences between district and state virtual schools in Florida, emphasizing how they work together to provide a wide range of courses to students. She highlights the flexibility and choice that virtual schools offer, particularly in subjects like foreign languages and specialized courses.
• Building Relationships in a Virtual Environment: Mandy discusses the importance of relationship-building not just between students and teachers, but also among administrators and educators. She shares how BOLD facilitates these connections to enhance the virtual learning experience.
• Challenges and Misconceptions of Online Learning: Mandy addresses common misconceptions about online learning, including the differences between emergency remote learning during the pandemic and quality online education. She also talks about the traits that make a good online learner and how virtual schools can adapt to meet diverse student needs.
• Innovations in Virtual Education: Mandy highlights some of the innovations at Pinellas Virtual School, such as separating student and parent orientations to better tailor the learning experience and improve student success.

This episode offers valuable insights into the evolving world of virtual education, the importance of collaboration among educators, and how virtual schools can provide students with unique opportunities and skills for the future.

For more insights and practical advice, tune into this episode and explore the work of BOLD and Pinellas Virtual School. Links to their resources are available in the show notes.

About today’s guest: Mandy Perry is the principal of Pinellas Virtual School and president of the Blended and Online Learning Discovery (BOLD) of Florida Executive Board. She is a leader in virtual education advocacy at both the state and national levels, dedicated to improving and expanding virtual learning opportunities for students.

Episode Links:

• Blended and Online Learning Discovery (BOLD) of Florida
• Pinellas Virtual School

Host Links:

1. Discover more virtual learning opportunities and resources at CILC.org with Tami Moehring and Allyson Mitchell.
2. Seth Fleischauer’s Banyan Global Learning leverages technology to enhance cultural competence and educational outcomes for teachers and students alike.

Creators & Guests

Host

Allyson Mitchell

SF

Host

Seth Fleischauer

TM

Host

Tami Moehring

What is Why Distance Learning??

The Why Distance Learning? Podcast explores the transformative power of live virtual learning and its role in shaping the future of education. Hosted by three seasoned distance learning experts, this podcast delivers insights, promising practices, and inspiration for educators, content providers, and education leaders integrating live virtual experiences into teaching and learning. Each episode features interviews with content creators, industry professionals, field experts, and innovative educators who are driving engagement, equity, and innovation through distance learning. By challenging common perceptions and uncovering the realities of live virtual education, Why Distance Learning highlights its true impact and explores how it continues to evolve in an ever-changing educational landscape.

Hosted by Seth Fleischauer of Banyan Global Learning and Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring of the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration.

Seth Fleischauer (00:00.922)
Hello everyone and welcome to why distance learning the podcast for educators who are engaged with live virtual learning experiences Whether they be content providers who produce and facilitate or educators who want to complement their curriculum and learn more about the medium We interview content providers industry professionals field experts and educators who love and use live virtual learning and this week Our guest is Mandy Perry and Mandy. Welcome to the podcast

Allyson (00:25.048)
Hey.

Mandy Perry (00:26.148)
Thanks so much for having me, I appreciate

Seth Fleischauer (00:28.962)
We're so excited to have you here. You are a virtual school principal. You also are involved on the state and now national level in terms of virtual school advocacy. So we have a lot to talk about. But first, Tammy, could you please introduce Mandy?

Tami Moehring (00:44.598)
I'd be happy to share her amazing bio with all of you. So Mandy Perry currently serves as a member of the blended in online learning discovery of Florida executive board. She's the organization's president representing 67 public virtual school districts across the state. Mandy is the principal of Pinellas virtual school and online K -12 Pinellas County public school. She oversees the school's operations, ensuring teachers and students are up to date on the latest technology.

to online learning. She has taught as a traditional instructor and virtual instructor. Prior to her leadership role in virtual education, Mandy graduated with a bachelor's degree in social science education from the University of South Florida, where she also earned a master's degree in educational leadership. Mandy, we're excited to have you be here.

Mandy Perry (01:36.762)
Thank you so much. It's exciting to be

Seth Fleischauer (01:40.034)
One of the things in your bio there is bold, right? The organization that

Mandy Perry (01:43.653)
Yes.

Seth Fleischauer (01:46.524)
that you lead. believe you're part of the founding. I was hoping you could start by just telling us the story of how that came to be and why it's an important presence for virtual schools in Florida.

Mandy Perry (01:59.12)
Sure. So in 2009, virtual schools were established in all the districts here across the state as a state mandate. so virtual schools in these traditional school counties began developing and were feeling kind of isolated. So the questions that they had, the professional development that they needed, they were trying to put that together by themselves as lone leaders.

And so they didn't really have other principals and other people to collaborate with in order to really answer their questions or get the things that they needed. And so slowly certain districts started to kind of get together and call each other and ask each other questions. And so out of those friendships that developed and out of those collaborations that developed, it became a need.

Seth Fleischauer (02:51.414)
you

Mandy Perry (02:52.484)
for us to have a way to collaborate and a way to help one another and a way to have a legislative voice and a way to provide professional development, not only for us as administrators, but also for our teachers. And so out of those needs and necessities, Bold was born. And so we started as a small group and have grown so that we incorporate all of our districts here in the state of Florida now that have virtual programs running. And so...

We do monthly PLCs. We do an annual symposium where we all get together face to face and it's an event that our teachers look forward to every year. They can hardly wait till when is the next symposium.

Allyson (03:33.804)
Mm -hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (03:35.511)
And so it sounds from your description that bold is essentially like an ESA, an educational service agency for virtual schools, because those are created to kind

pool resources, get people together to be able to provide things to districts that might not be able to provide them on their own. Would you say that that's an apt comparison?

Mandy Perry (03:54.222)
It is similar to that, yes. Obviously we focus on the needs specifically of what our state requires of us, sharing out information, making sure we're all on the same page. We have audits and so we get together if somebody has a question, is there being audited and asking each other so we have another resource of places to go. So it is similar in

Seth Fleischauer (04:16.009)
Got it. And what are the problems you're trying to solve right now through Bold? What are the big things on your agenda?

Mandy Perry (04:22.992)
So some of the big things that we have are some legislative issues that we would like to see. As the district virtual schools, they were established, legislation didn't really set them up so that they were going to be able to be like the state virtual school. And so we want to see that we can establish year -round funding. That's one of our pain points that we've had is not being able to receive funding when we run our summer programs for our students.

Seth Fleischauer (04:38.262)
Hmm

Mandy Perry (04:51.598)
So we would like to be able to have that option because there's lots of students that are either looking to accelerate or looking to do credit recovery. And so we're hoping that the legislation will see that being able to serve members of our own community and being able to stay with the teachers that they've had throughout the year would be very valuable to them and so that funding would be necessary. So that's been one of the things that we've really tried to see come

and just be able to recognize how important district virtual schools are as well as state virtual schools.

Allyson (05:25.538)
So interesting and it's so great to know that you founded it. You saw these problems and you brought a community together and you just see it grow and grow to be able to meet new challenges. And I wonder, I guess I have two questions. One, the difference between state and the state schools. How do those differ between the district and state virtual schools? And then maybe a little bit about how virtual schools and traditional brick and mortar schools, excuse me, how they are a little bit different from one another.

Mandy Perry (05:55.792)
So in a lot of ways, we all kind of have a partnership. We all kind of work together. So it's kind of interesting. In Florida in particular, most of the districts are using the state's virtual schools curriculum. So we're utilizing their curriculum so that students are getting the same curriculum in either place. In Florida, it doesn't matter where you live. You're allowed to attend any virtual school that you want to. So it's a big choice area here. So students have

Allyson (06:09.122)
Yay.

Seth Fleischauer (06:14.454)
Huh.

Mandy Perry (06:23.662)
a lot of choices available to them. Some districts are creating some of their own courses that the state virtual school may not have. So students are coming in to go to those types of courses. For example, Pasco, my neighboring county to the north has German. It's easier for my students to go there to take German than for them to take German with me and I'll have to find the teacher and develop that. So we work together to be able to provide students everything they might want to

Seth Fleischauer (06:43.958)
Hmm.

Mandy Perry (06:52.386)
in order to kind of serve those needs. In the same token, we're also doing that for those brick and mortar schools, because especially in today's day and age, as they're struggling to be able to provide teachers for all of their courses, we're able to kind of reach out and help with that. So for example, this particular year, my school will now be offering Chinese one, two, three, and four for all of the students in Pinellas County, because they were no longer able to keep that in that traditional setting.

Allyson (07:13.304)
Okay.

Mandy Perry (07:19.492)
It has advantages, right? Because before those classes were offered in specific schools, but now they're offered countywide for any student to be able to take them.

Allyson (07:30.22)
That is amazing. I love to hear how distance learning or utilizing different forms of distance learning online live, how it really does solve problems and helps students get more credits during their time in school. from language learning to even some career and technical education experiences that can just be working in tandem with what they're doing in the coursework. It's just such an amazing resource for the students, the teachers, the family, the community.

And it's great to know how you work in partnership, because that's really how it can all make the magic happen, is that partnership opportunities.

Mandy Perry (08:08.45)
what it's all about, right? I mean, we're all in this for the students, right? So how many opportunities and what can we provide these students? The world's a different place than when school was originally established. You now can have friends all over the globe and you can meet up with people everywhere in these kind of situations like we're doing here today. And, you know, as Seth knows from what he does with the Banyan Learning, so this just really gives it a chance to be able to experience, let our students experience what's out there for them globally as

Allyson (08:11.596)
Mm -hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (08:37.868)
And it reminds me, like the setup that you guys have in Florida reminds me little bit of Utah. had someone, James Hodges was on the podcast way early. Like think it was like episode

And they have this like 40 year infrastructure of distance learning. And it's a similar situation where if there is a course offering at one high school that doesn't have enough kids taking it or there's a demand for that course from students who are at a high school where it's not offered, they use the distance learning to connect those students together and be able to make it so that they can take the course. It's such an amazing use case for distance learning. Distance learning is all about access.

And there's what a perfect example of providing access to something that you wouldn't be able to take if you didn't have this medium. Right. And that spirit of collaboration is great, too, especially considering the fact that you were talking about like student choice. You know, they have the opportunity to like go to any certain school, yet you are also like collaborating with each other. It's it's it's refreshing to hear, especially and I think this

fairly common in the education space, but it's refreshing to hear that there are people who are like competitors with each other, who are also collaborating with each other, right? Like, like that, like it is, it is a model that we can all, I think, learn from in the rest of society in terms of, know, what's, what's the real goal here, right? We're here for students. I'm wondering in terms of like the way that you run your virtual school, because obviously you have this like, you have this like purview

seeing all the different schools and what's through bold, what's successful at each of those schools. How does the knowledge, the view of what everybody else is doing impact what you're doing on your campus and how, virtual campus, and how, like, what are some of the things that you've innovated on your virtual campus that you've been able to get out to the rest of the network?

Mandy Perry (10:36.09)
So one of the things that we talk a lot about in the virtual environment, in our bold meetings, in our professional development, is that idea of relationship building and really building those relationships with our students. A lot of the talk was really centered around students, but as I've just explained, it's not just about building relationships with students, right? It's building relationships administrator to administrator, teacher to teacher, so that everyone's able to really come together and bring those things

Seth Fleischauer (11:03.638)
Hmm.

Mandy Perry (11:05.264)
so that we can work for the benefit of students. The mission of Pinellas Virtual School is 100 % student success, right? And you all have to be on board to get to 100 % student success. It's also the mission of the district that I work in. And what a fitting mission to just bring into that virtual school where students don't always feel that success. And so we have been able to see how important that relationship building is to make kids successful.

And so we've built that amongst ourselves so that we're able to really do that in our school and in our state. And now as being members of the Virtual Leadership Learning Alliance, we're now being able to do that nationally because we're able to bring in these other people from these other states that are doing the same thing and learn from them and learn how we can even improve and make better, right? Education.

never stops growing. If you ever get to the point where you think that you can stop learning, maybe it's something different because in this job, you can never stop learning and growing. And that's really what's going to make you successful. We change something every year just because we want to make it better and we want to improve the experience that our students are having. This year, we are changing the way we're doing orientation. One of the things that we feel

Seth Fleischauer (12:03.637)
Mm hmm.

Mandy Perry (12:26.956)
is going to make the experience better from the first day is instead of orientating parents and students together, we're going to orientate them separately. And we're going to have parents tell us what they think a student day should look like. At the same time, in another room, we have students telling us what their day should look like so that we can bring that together, right? Because those parents are our partners. And if those parents aren't there as learning coaches and helping those kids when we're not with them,

Seth Fleischauer (12:36.662)
Mm -hmm.

Mandy Perry (12:54.786)
in time and space, then it makes it difficult to meet that success. And a lot of times we find that they're maybe not on the same page in terms of what that learning should look like. So by being able to show them that separately and then having them come together, I think we'll really build those great student schedules for success.

Seth Fleischauer (13:13.872)
Sorry, you go awesome.

Allyson (13:14.18)
my goodness. That's an ex. I'm just so excited about that model. Yay. I that how I will. love them. I love that you're learning from the different groups from the national standpoint that you're seeing what similar what can we grow together where the areas that we can build up and also just the idea to think about the student. I would love to hear just all of the student feedback on what they think their day should be like. But to hear the parents it's to.

to know that that's a place that you're getting the ideas of building your schedule, I think is so powerful because it just immediately brings the family or the caregivers or the network into the learning experience for the students. And must be fun conversation after your orientation for the families or the groups to come back together and have that discussion maybe at their dinner table or wherever they might be traveling that day or finding themselves.

Seth Fleischauer (13:58.678)
Hmm.

Allyson (14:12.184)
come

Mandy Perry (14:13.41)
helpful when a student's struggling, right? Because we will collect these schedules, you know, we will have them uploaded into our LMS and those kind of things and then if we do have a student that's struggling we can go back and refer to these schedules to really help guide them because everyone wants their student to be successful just sometimes they need that guidance and this is a different way to learn and a different way to do things and so we want to be that thought partner with that parent to help their student be

Allyson (14:15.5)
Mm -hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (14:43.457)
And in that process, like you're talking, I think a bit about consensus building and I'm curious as to how you get there with parents. Like you mentioned that some of the parents were not necessarily on the same page.

with what the learning should look like. Is it about just tailoring the approach for each student because it's a virtual setting, you have a little bit more flexibility to do something like that? Or is there consensus that you need to build amongst the parents, amongst the students in order to be able to really develop that sense of culture that you want? Or is it

Mandy Perry (15:15.248)
It's both, it really is both because it is individualized in a lot of ways, right? Because their needs are different. And you can't say that everyone's gonna get up and get online at 8 a .m. because that may not work for a student that has maybe some ADHD and they stay up really late at night and 8 a .m. just isn't difficult, which is what led them to this environment. And so we really try

Seth Fleischauer (15:39.862)
Hmm.

Mandy Perry (15:41.56)
make sure that they take those things into consideration. We provide sample schedules and we write them all over the board. But that's overwhelming when you haven't really sat down and thought about your needs and how it works for your family. You know, when you have a student that's a professional athlete and they have to train.

four or five hours a day, school's going to look very different for them to be able to get all their coursework in. So their schedule's not gonna look the same way that maybe a student in our program with autism looks where he performs really well in the morning, or a student with ADHD that performs better late in the day. So it's really letting them have that, but also then bringing them back to that at the end of the day when a student is struggling so that we can help them get back on board and get back on

Seth Fleischauer (16:03.506)
And.

Allyson (16:28.442)
So powerful.

Seth Fleischauer (16:29.654)
When you're, you you gave us a couple of use cases here are examples of the type of people that are drawn to this. Let's say you have a student who's curious about virtual school and they come to you and they want to know, is it right for them? How does that conversation go?

Mandy Perry (16:49.52)
So there are traits out there of what makes good online learners. And we will discuss that about being self -motivated, about being organized, about having time management skills, really kind of relating it back to those executive functioning skills that most kids don't necessarily have. But that doesn't mean you can't be a virtual learner. It just means we need to teach you how to have those skills. Some adults don't have those skills,

Seth Fleischauer (17:05.908)
Hmm Hmm

Allyson (17:13.27)
Yeah.

Mandy Perry (17:14.684)
I mean, so it's okay to not have those skills, but it's about being willing to learn those skills and implement those skills to be able to be successful and move forward. We suggest they try a course, see if it's for you. So we don't, you don't have to come to our program and say all or nothing. We give them the option to take one class with us. Why don't you try this one class and see if it works for you? And so we have students, you know, really our full -time program is our smallest group. We serve.

Seth Fleischauer (17:35.414)
Wow

Mandy Perry (17:43.76)
anywhere between 150 to 200 students a year, full -time, meaning they never step into a school, they do everything online. It's basically approximately six hours a day in an online setting. But then we serve over 7 ,000 students in my district that just take one to three classes. And so for some of them, they just need that little bit of flexibility in their life to be able to do what they need to do and to have a good learning experience where other students need.

a totally different learning environment. So we're able to meet those needs, whereas a traditional school isn't able to because of the bell schedule and because of the times that they work on and those type of things.

Allyson (18:23.6)
my goodness, the skills that are being built for the future of work is so exciting in my mind. Because really, if you think about the opportunities your students are really gaining, whether they're doing a hybrid experience, like you said, maybe that one or three courses, or they've realized, hey, this is the environment where I know I'm going to be best. It's wonderful to hear about those skills being built, that choice being available. Because when you go into the workforce,

the technology that we have that connects us is only going to grow and grow and grow. It might have different names and have different formats, different updates that people are walking out instead of a red leave button. It's all different, but it's interesting to under, it's so exciting to hear you're the model that you're putting together and the skills that you're intrinsically having your students really build up using this virtual course and being able to have that ability to work with their families, work with their communities.

I do wonder just because I love all of the things, I get so excited, but I do know just working in distance learning myself, there are always some challenges that come up or misconceptions or a common phrase that you'll have to be like, no, but think of it this way. So I wonder, especially as you were able to build the community that you're building nationally, are there any challenges or misconceptions that you do see come up often or regularly?

that we can reinforce are things that do not have to be a worry for some, not that it's a one -fit -all for everyone.

Mandy Perry (19:59.418)
So I would say there's a couple of things. One of those is sometimes people think that anybody can do online learning. And it's just not true. And it's not a bad thing if you can't do online learning. And it doesn't mean anything. It just means it's not the good modality for you. You know, I'm not a good auditory learner. So if I had to listen to something and be expected to retain it all the time, that is not going to work for me. I'm more visual.

I need to see things and I need to write things down and I need to kind of go through that motion. So it's just about your types of learning. A lot of people will say to a student that says, well, I don't like attending school. Well, you should go to virtual school. Well, that's not the answer to the problem. There's something else that they're not enjoying. So we really need to find out what don't you like about coming to school? Is it about coming here at 730 in the morning?

Seth Fleischauer (20:37.93)
Okay.

Allyson (20:42.654)
Yeah, you're like, wait.

Mandy Perry (20:55.28)
Okay, well maybe an online class would work better for you for that morning period if you could get here at 8 .30 instead. You know, really having those conversations. That's kind of the age old since I've been doing this since 2009. Probably our more recent challenge is that comparison of contrasting emergency remote learning to online learning, right? And making sure people understand the difference because now we get these calls that say,

Seth Fleischauer (21:05.91)
right.

Allyson (21:18.915)
Yeah.

Mandy Perry (21:23.578)
Well, my son or daughter did really great during COVID learning. And so now we want to do online learning. And so we have to really go through and dispel the differences in terms of what that looks like versus what online learning truly is and get them back to understanding that, know, online learning is a long -term thing.

that what they did in the COVID learning was short term. It wasn't well planned out. It didn't have all of the things that we have within a virtual school. you know, with this extensive PD that we provide our teachers and the support and that it's more asynchronous and, you know, more one -on -one versus coming onto a synchronous lesson and getting this in a group type setting and things like that. you know, going through and just really helping people understand what they don't know.

Seth Fleischauer (22:11.01)
I think it's funny, that was that distinction of emergency remote learning versus what online learning is. I remember hearing that from you when we met in person at ISTE.

And I've been looking for the right way to say that. And I thought that you said that in a really great way. It's kind of the purpose of this podcast, right? Is that like everybody had this impression of what our little industry is. And it's just not that, right? And you spoke to a couple of the things about like synchronous versus asynchronous. know, we at CILC, at Banning Global Learning, we operate in the synchronous realm a bit more.

but I wonder if you can break it down for us a little bit more in terms of the differences between what happened during emergency remote learning and what quality online learning looks like, because I do know that you are also involved in writing the national standards for quality online learning. and so, you know, what is that quality piece, that was not present when we all overnight turned on zoom and tried to

Allyson (23:16.856)
Well, and to add on to that question, if it's OK, the idea of prior to the pandemic, the synchronous learning that was happening as well, how do you feel that that's changed the model of how people are using that live aspect? Just to add on to the question, if that's OK.

Mandy Perry (23:37.626)
Sure. So we do use some synchronous learning and we learn the value of that during COVID, especially for younger kids, right? Our K through five really need some of that synchronous time where they're interacting with their teacher. But it's finding that healthy balance between the two, right? Between the synchronous and the asynchronous piece when you're talking about six hours of learning a day. Because really, you know, if you think about when you go to school, it's about a six hour day.

You know, and sitting in front of Zoom for six hours, like some kids were doing during that emergency remote learning, would be extremely difficult. can't imagine having ADHD and not being able to sit in my seat for an hour, let alone having an expectation that I'm gonna sit in front of a screen and go through all of my learning process and I'm 12 years old or five years old or, you know, five years older.

Allyson (24:30.966)
and my comfy environment.

Mandy Perry (24:34.224)
I would much rather, you know, go over here and play with my video games instead of sitting here looking at this teacher that's talking to me, right? You know, emergency remote learning, like you said, Seth, we didn't have a lot of time, right? It was a plug pull almost, right? One day we were all together and the next day we weren't. And so there wasn't a lot of planning that was able to go into emergency remote learning.

A good virtual program has months, not years of planning involved in it. You you're really laying out a mission statement, figuring out how you're going to provide your courses and your content. You're going through and figuring out your leadership, how you're going to, depending on where you're set up, your governance. All of those different things have to really go into that. And emergency remote learning didn't have those things, right?

Online learning, we really try to, as we talked about with the scheduling piece, writing out those daily schedules, personalize that learning for each student. Our teachers build these relationships one -on -one. They didn't have time to do that in emergency remote learning. Everybody was trying to learn on the fly and really do it. teacher lesson planning and writing online content are two very different things.

And some people made an assumption that because I can write a lesson plan that I can now suddenly deliver online content and that it shouldn't be that big of a deal when it really is like trying to compare the sun and the moon and try to figure the same thing because they both provide light. That's not, they're not the same thing. And so, you know, those are really kind of just some of the big differences there. But, you know, I think that while

Allyson (26:11.775)
Yeah.

Allyson (26:15.342)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mandy Perry (26:28.112)
COVID was difficult and that emergency remote learning was difficult. I do think that it had some benefits for us in our industry, right? It did teach us some things that maybe we could even do better than we were doing in the past. And so I think there was a lot to really learn from that. So I think, I like to look at things and think about, like I said from the beginning, how can we grow and learn and do better? And I think that that opportunity really gave us some time to do

And so, and we're continuing to do that, which is exciting to

Seth Fleischauer (26:56.342)
I want to get like just a little bit more wonky because we have you know, we have a lot of listeners here who are content providers. Let's say there was a you know, a teacher you talked about the difference between the sun and the moon. They both provide light but they're different things. You said that the huge difference between emergency remote learning

What we do is the amount of planning that we put into it the the intention behind it But if I'm a classroom teacher and all my experience has been in the brick -and -mortar classroom, I'm coming in and trying to design an online course How do you coach me to adapt my in -person approach to the online world?

Mandy Perry (27:42.906)
So it's very different. And we actually in the national standards, we actually have two different guides to really help with that. We have a guide geared towards standards just for course writing and what needs to be in those courses. And when you think about writing a course, it would really almost be like scripting your lesson plan, right? I mean, it has to be very clear. It has to have full communication. Students have to know what to do from beginning to end. And it also has to be equitable and have

Seth Fleischauer (27:58.614)
Okay.

Mandy Perry (28:12.558)
you know, all the accessibility pieces to it as well. Because what if that student is visually impaired? What if they're hearing impaired? You know, we're asking somebody that's written a lesson plan to come in and do those things. So, you know, really our teachers and our content are almost kept separately within our schools here and what I'm doing in the district virtual schools. We have people that will write content and then we have our teachers that deliver it.

Seth Fleischauer (28:24.918)
Hmm.

Mandy Perry (28:41.176)
And really, right now I'm in the middle of onboarding two new teachers. And I have one that she's really kind of getting it and really understanding it very quickly. And then I have another one that every day he says to me, I don't think I'm ready for this. I don't think I'm ready for this. It's so different. And he's struggling and he says, I've been here eight years. And now I feel like I don't know anything. And it is a whole new experience when you come in and learn.

Allyson (28:44.834)
Yay!

Seth Fleischauer (28:51.094)
Hmm.

Mandy Perry (29:10.35)
We communicate a lot with our families. Lots of phone calls. We make monthly phone calls. We make progress phone calls. We have discussion based assessments with our students. We make a welcome phone call. We do all these things. And so we have had him kind of as part of the onboarding serving as like a teacher assistant within another teacher's classroom to help him get used to it. And the first time we asked him to make a progress call, he was so nervous, like all parents and say,

Seth Fleischauer (29:21.942)
Okay.

Allyson (29:36.445)
no.

Mandy Perry (29:38.958)
your student is missing these assignments and hasn't worked in this long. And it was just very difficult, but we sat together, we coached, we walked him through the individual pieces of what that looks like and how to say it. We modeled it for him before he did it and those kinds of things. We made those phone calls in front of him and showed him what it was like, but it was just a very different experience for him

Seth Fleischauer (29:48.766)
Yeah, I think that

Mandy Perry (30:02.978)
In his experience, when he interacts, it's mostly been with the students that are sitting in front of him in his classroom having those conversations versus picking up the phone and talking with the student and the parent to kind of find out what's going

Allyson (30:16.812)
goodness.

Seth Fleischauer (30:17.834)
That was a really good illustration of the differences in the planning, the differences in the execution. You know, it really is quite different. And even what you're talking about in a live virtual or in virtual school is different from the live setting that we interact with. It has elements of brick and mortar because you're in a more live synchronous environment. It really, it speaks to how complex and deep and different all of these experiences are and how much expertise and experience can

make it so that you bring something new, better, more interesting, more effective to your practice. And along those lines, a question that we ask all of our listeners is to describe a golden moment, a moment when you're like, wow, this is exactly what I thought this could do when I started down this road of virtual school learning. Can you give us one of those stories?

Mandy Perry (31:16.368)
wasn't really into distance learning when I got into distance learning. I was actually working on my master's degree at the University of South Florida. And I kept partnering with this, not intentionally, like we kept getting partnered up, this other girl and I, and she worked at the state virtual school and she kept saying, you would be perfect, you would love this, you would be perfect for this. And I was like, what does it work?

Allyson (31:26.178)
Yay.

Mandy Perry (31:42.32)
I'm in my brick and mortar classroom. You don't know what you're talking about. And this went on for two years. Years we went through this. And then I started to realize through our conversations back then in 2008, my whole class was really online. I had created a whole teacher website. Everything that my students needed was already, you

Allyson (31:45.762)
Ha ha!

Mandy Perry (32:08.224)
It was not as well written as the virtual curriculum that I delve in today, but my students could be absent and see everything that we had covered because those PowerPoints were there and these lessons were there and all of these things that they could get that we were working through. I was big into using the computers in the classroom and having lab time and doing these different projects and things like that. so, you know, I jumped, if you will.

and went and started working at the state's virtual school. And it was such a different experience. The kids that you meet are so unique and so fascinating. And, you know, like I said, you run the gamut of meeting these students that you would never really have the opportunity to meet. You know, I've gotten to teach a race car driver and a professional wake order. But on the other side, as being the principal at Pell's virtual school, I've gotten to interact with kids

Seth Fleischauer (32:40.598)
Okay.

Mandy Perry (33:03.556)
We're like their last hope for their parents. We've had some kids with some severe autism that the parent is constantly being called and asked to pick them up because they just aren't fitting in. And that's really the true testament to what you're doing when your parents are the ones that are out there advocating for your program. And we currently have a parent that's a teacher.

Seth Fleischauer (33:09.174)
Hmm

Mandy Perry (33:26.712)
in our district and her son is autistic and she just felt there was no other hope for him and we were the last resort and he's thriving with us and he's brilliant and you know when we bring him in and we work with him and we have to do some things one -on -one with him you know he's a he's a challenge but you know we have a different way that we're able to kind of do that and and we get it like he might schedule a call with the teacher and the teacher will call and the dad will say

Allyson (33:35.916)
Yay.

Seth Fleischauer (33:37.75)
Okay.

Mandy Perry (33:55.536)
not now, it's not working now, we didn't have our breakfast or we didn't have these things. That's okay, because we can call back later. We don't have the demands of Abel and we don't have 30 people sitting in front of us and all of those challenges that our friends have in the traditional school setting. So we're able to give those to him. And so it's hard Seth to really narrow it down because I've been privileged to have so many unique experience and see so many unique students.

Seth Fleischauer (34:06.535)
Hmm Hmm

Mandy Perry (34:23.682)
and work with them and see them be successful. In my graduation speech this year, I graduated a young man that came from a very difficult background and had a difficult time. And there were times where we thought, is he gonna get to this day? Is he gonna be here? And so him and I celebrated my 10th year together. We started at the same time in the program. And so I mentioned that in my graduation speech and it was so adorable. I mean, to see him go.

Seth Fleischauer (34:35.126)
Hmm.

Mandy Perry (34:51.146)
yell out in the middle of the speech, that's me, that's me that she's talking about, you know. So it's just there's so many of those moments that you get and isn't that why we get into this? I mean that's why we're here, right, the students and to be able to have all of those moments and and to be able to reach students just

Allyson (34:53.774)
yay.

Seth Fleischauer (35:11.04)
man, so well said. Thank you for sharing. Our last question is the title of the podcast, Mandy Perry, Why Distance Learning?

Mandy Perry (35:20.72)
So distance learning is important, right? It provides a flexibility and opportunities for students that they may not have. We're preparing them for, as Allison brought up earlier, those 21st century skills that they're really gonna need, whether it's going to a college or going to a job. You know, how many companies now are onboarding people in a distance learning method? You know, you go in and instead of having an onboarding meeting, you sit in front of a computer and you do your onboarding those.

those ways and you know, we're teaching students executive functioning skills. We are teaching students how to use the technology in a professional manner so that they understand what it means to upload a document, to create a presentation, to do all of these skills that they're going to need to be successful in the world. And some of those things they're just not getting within that traditional setting. And we feel that this is what brings that there. And not to mention all the students that just have these, as I've mentioned.

unique opportunities and unique experiences where they may not have this opportunity if it wasn't for distance learning.

Seth Fleischauer (36:29.419)
Yeah, it's all about that. It's all about opportunity. It's all about access. Thank you so much for being here, Mandy, Tammy, Allison. Do you guys have any last questions before we

Allyson (36:39.352)
Just wanted to say thank you so much for your time. Your work is just so wonderful. I'm so excited to learn from you today and continue to have conversations to learn. And thank you so much for all that you do. your learners are, I can't wait to see all the things that they're gonna do in the world.

Mandy Perry (36:56.324)
Thank you so much.

Seth Fleischauer (36:58.07)
Well, thanks again, Mandy. Thanks again so much for being here. For our listeners, if you'd like to learn more about the podcast, you can go to cilc .org slash podcast. You can check the show notes for any links that were mentioned here today. Thank you as always to our editor, Lucas Salazar. If you'd like to support the podcast, please tell a friend, leave a rating, a review or follow us. And if you want to know the answer to the question, why distance learning, check out the people we highlight on this podcast.

These are the people who are leveraging this amazing technology to truly transform the learning experience. Why distance learning? Because it's accessible and it's awesome. See you next time.