While most students flow out from campus after sixth period on Blue Days, junior Hannah Murray head to special education teacher Lauren Taylor’s classroom, takes out her computer and gets ready for her online class, sitting alongside about 15 other students with soft music and a silent movie playing in the background.
Although Taylor takes attendance and supervises the class, she mainly helps students to complete course credits online during the “eighth period.
Students learn on a Fremont-based non-profit online program called Cyber High, which is designed for students who fall behind in credits or who struggle to keep up with the instruction in classes.
Since she missed her sophomore year, Murray enrolled in the recovery classes on Cyber High to complete course credits for 10th grade English and history in the fall semester. It has been a good option for her because it gives her “an extra period to catch up on school work,” she said.
After completing her 10th grade credits, Murray has worked on 11th grade English and History classes on Cyber High.
“Cyber High is pretty easy since most of the courses are meant to be as easy as possible to help people recover for credits they’ve missed,” Murray said. “The history courses are a little difficult because they’re a little sporadic and they pack in a lot of info, but the English courses are easy as long as you read the books quickly.”
Most students and parents are recommended to explore enrollment in recovery classes to complete course credits by school counselors. Usually, the student enrolls to remediate credits for a class or the student finds this option more suitable to his or her learning style.
“If anybody needed to recover from a course quickly, I would go to that class,” Murray said.
The Cyber High classes are A-G approved, which means that they will prepare students for a four-year college and that the student will graduate with the complete set of A-G credits. The classes have five units each that consist of modules, activities, and quizzes to gauge student progress for the final exam at the end of each unit.
The online structure of the classes allows students to study on their own schedule and at their own pace, and the courses often help students avoid retaking courses over the summer.
“The classes are fully independent and self-sufficient, so all the curriculum is already online,” Taylor said. “The quizzes provide the student with feedback to let them know if they’re understanding the content.”
Because of the self-paced nature of the classes, the roster for Taylor’s eighth-period class changes regularly as students exit the class when they complete the credit and other students enroll in the class. Students are also often excused from the class for sports and other commitments.
“In the life of a high school student, sometimes things happen in life and things happen to them; that makes it difficult for them to put forth their best effort in a class,” Taylor said. “So they may end up not getting a passing grade in a class at some point throughout their high school career, and Cyber High gives them another opportunity to make up those credits and still graduate A-G ready.”