Education Week: Virtual Teachers Deploy Skills Across Countries

Education Week: Virtual Teachers Deploy Skills Across Countries:

U.S. schools connect with educators in other countries to expand offerings

Petersburg High School sits on an island in Alaska's Southeast Panhandle, where most of the land is a national forest, and the 140-student school in recent years has struggled with dwindling enrollment, staff, and electives. So when the Virtual High School Global Consortium, a nonprofit organization specializing in collaborative online education and professional development, offered 25 student spots at a reduced price in exchange for one Advanced Placement teacher, Petersburg took the deal.

"This way, we could offer engineering, architecture, art history, veterinary science, and a bunch of things we couldn't offer our students otherwise," said Petersburg English and Spanish teacher Sue Hardin, who under the deal has facilitated weekly AP classes for students in schools in some Northeastern states as well as Oklahoma and Washington state, and even in China, Switzerland, and Venezuela. "And I appreciate the diversity I get in return."