Originally published on Stillwater News Press – July 18, 2023
For 17 years, Perkins resident Kelly Pruett has taught early childhood education – mostly in traditional classrooms.
But for the past seven years, she’s taught her students through Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy, one of seven K12 online schools in the state.
“(We’re) not home schooling, we’re schooling at home in a virtual world through a public school,” Pruett said.
OVCA offers individualized learning plans to meet students’ strengths and needs, quality online curriculum through Stride K12 with multiple-leveled core courses and electives, online clubs and in-person field trips and other activities.
Currently, OVCA has 13 families enrolled who live in Payne County, with 23 students enrolled between kindergarten and 12th grade.
Pruett specializes in kindergarten developmental learning, but also in the academic, social and emotional needs of her students.
“With young children, they’re not going to learn if their basic needs aren’t met,” Pruett said. “It … goes hand-in-hand. … You can’t teach a kid if you don’t have a connection with them. The relationship comes before the education.”
She meets her students as they start their learning journey.
“Some of our kids … come to us already knowing their colors or their shapes or some can already count to 100,” Pruett said. “Our curriculum is very developmentally appropriate, but it also can be very challenging to enrich them and to give them more rigor.”
During the summer break, Pruett offered tips for kindergarteners and their parents in a blog post titled “Summer Learning Activities for Kindergarteners.”
They included ideas like exploring the kitchen, getting outside, starting a family book club, getting artsy and growing a green thumb. The activities are geared toward expanding a child’s mind and developing skills like counting, identifying shapes, growing an imagination and building fine motor skills.
“Anything that you can think that a teacher would do in a walled classroom can be done in the virtual world,” Pruett said. “We made volcanoes one year and they absolutely loved it.”
The curriculum comes with hands-on “manipulatives,” like snap cubes, pattern blocks, alphabetical tiles and full-color library books.
“We do lots of jumping jacks (or say), ‘Jump as high as you can as we count,’” Pruett said. “We make it very hands-on when there aren’t manipulatives, as well.”
She said even during the kindergarten graduation ceremony, she encouraged her students to stand up and dance along in their graduation clothes.
“Children’s bodies are not meant to sit still and be quiet,” Pruett said. “They’re meant to climb … to jump … to run … to laugh and be silly.”
Her teaching time takes about 20 percent of the actual class time, and the rest of the time the kids teach the lesson, explaining how they found their answers.
More than just teaching, Pruett’s goal is to have a partnership between herself and her students’ parents. Drawing from her own experiences with her 12-year-old son who has attention deficit hyperactive disorder, she reminds parents that they are doing the best they can.
“(Sometimes parents) don’t think about the little things that they do at home that actually do prepare their child for school (like library visits and working in the kitchen),” Pruett said. “I also tell (parents) this is their (child’s) first day of kindergarten, they don’t have to know anything. Parents do a lot more than they give themselves credit for.”
Other ideas she’s used in her online classroom have been “tornado in a bottle,” sock puppets, crockpot applesauce and even publishing a class book.
Pruett said OVCA is a tight-knit community, and school administration helps families who may need groceries or a ride to state testing. It’s also a school of choice, where parents have a very high involvement in their child’s schooling. The curriculum is developmentally appropriate and meets state standards.
“Even in the seven years that I’ve been there, we have continued to improve it,” Pruett said. “It’s more kid-friendly. But one of the things that parents have more involvement in with our school is, they have more knowledge about what is being taught to their children, whether it be political … or their educational knowledge that they’re getting.”
Parents are daily working with their child and monitoring the lessons and stories, and they have a say in whether they want their child to be a part of that lesson or topic, Pruett said.
“For example, sometimes we have families that maybe might not want their child to learn the pledge of allegiance,” Pruett said. “Not a problem. They can skip that lesson and … go on to the next one. (Others say), ‘Yes, I want my kid to know the pledge of allegiance or I want my kid to read the story.’”
Pruett said by taking out the political aspect of learning, the curriculum is family-friendly, including avoiding “woke” agendas.
“It doesn’t have to be, ‘Oh, my kid can’t go to school here because they’re pushing this topic,” Pruett said. “(It’s) one of the ways that we work with our families to help make it individualized for that student, but also for that family … and respect their beliefs, their cultural values.”
Pruett said she probably won’t go back to a brick-and-mortar school setting if she continues to teach. For some families, OVCA isn’t the best fit – but more often than not, it is.
“I love teaching in the virtual world,” Pruett said. “I get to impact so many more families.”
Learn more about Oklahoma Virtual Charter Academy at https://ovca.k12.com/.
