Learning Made Available, At One's Comfort

Shanaya Anderson, Director of Online Learning at Aldine ISD

Shanaya Anderson, Director of Online Learning at Aldine ISD

The effects of an impromptu switch from traditional in-class learning to online E-learning during the pandemic led to many Aldine ISD students falling behind in class, which led to the loss of credits and the jeopardy of graduating on time. However, unconventional difficulties call for unconventional solutions, and online E-learning has been innovative in giving Aldine students an opportunity for choices.

Dr. Shanaya Anderson, a highly experienced educator, has been a vital member of the Aldine ISD for the past 17 years. With her extensive knowledge of the education system, she has been instrumental in developing and implementing the district's online learning programs since 2014. For Dr. Anderson, the ultimate goal is to grow the online department into a vital secondary tool to expand the learning options for at-risk students.

One of the major perks of online E-learning has been the use of credit recovery, which is changing the course of student lives in Aldine ISD due to some considerations our population experiences.

Online learning is placed across all high school campuses. Students are placed in a lab and work on a course to regain credit. The course is designed to cover all of the content for a particular class, and the student is able to work on the course at their own pace, which allows them to work on more than one class, even for those students who are working to help financially help their family and might have the time to finish coursework immediately.

In addition to assisting our students with more choices, opportunities, and easier work life, we have focused on ensuring our teachers are better equipped and have better support in their E-learning online classes. We also realized we must provide our lab teachers with more support and training. This has been a focus for the online department. We provide training in lab management, data analysis, student motivation, and self-regulation. We also train our lab teachers to prioritize relationships with students. This is critical. Our successes are due to the rapport we have built with students.

In 2021-2022 we had over 61,000 students, 75.5% were considered At-risk by TEA's definition, and 91.6% were economically disadvantaged. 38.5 % of students are enrolled in bilingual and English language learning programs. Students who have failed a course can take a virtual course in an attempt to graduate on time, but in Aldine, we did it differently. Our students are assigned to labs with certified teachers. Our district has virtual content specialists who are also assisting these students, rotating to our 17 high school campuses to provide face-to-face support in these virtual courses. We have a unique Senior Action Plan to target, which seniors may immediately intervene proactively. It is the entirety of our approach that led to the completion of over 10,000 virtual courses in 2021-2022. The Online Learning department aims to support students in reaching their academic and graduation goals. The result is that we are seeing our district's graduation rate steadily rising each year. Specifically, we are seeing an increase in our At-Risk students graduating on time as we target support to them. But more than that, our approach means we provide our students with the additional benefits of social learning skills, selfregulation, and self-advocacy.

Before Covid, Aldine had an existing online learning platform with online learning labs on each of our high school campuses to assist with students' need to recover high school credits. However, post-Covid, we recognize the need to expand our support and promote academic achievement; therefore, we are adding more proactive measures such as grade repair, content recovery, and supplemental resources.

Our successes are due to our focus on building rapport and relationships with our students. We focus on understanding the whole child to provide a safe learning environment for students to achieve their graduation goals. We pride ourselves on encouraging motivation and self-regulated learning to promote academic success.