Local teacher discusses move from traditional to online classroom

New experiences are nothing new to Falcon View Connections Academy teacher Daphne Olson. After spending the last few years teaching math at different grade levels in different schools, she joins the public online school to teach all the math courses offered for grades 6 – 12.

While attending Emporia State University, Daphne spent seven weeks following her sophomore year teaching English in South Korea. In 2015 she spent the summer in Plano, Texas tutoring at Mathnasium, a unique math-only learning platform for students. She returned to Kansas and student taught in Wichita for her early graduation in December of that year.

In 2016, Daphne taught advanced placement statistics and algebra at Newton High School in Kansas. In 2019, she moved to Minnesota and taught geometry, functions, statistics, trigonometry, and guided study at Rockford High School.

For Daphne, the transition to an online classroom environment was a bit of a challenge, however her fellow teachers were very helpful in sharing different best practices. She also believes onboarding demonstrations that the school provided the students and their families were helpful to her.

“I’ve been new to enough places that I’ve been able to adjust and get to know the staff and how things work,” she said. “Being new always means there are things people do not realize the new people do not know which frustrates me. The teachers (at FVCA) have been awesome at answering all my random questions.”

While Daphne appreciates the experience of teaching in a traditional classroom where she gets to see the faces of the students and their reaction when they understand the material, she likes how teaching in the online environment gives her the opportunity to know everything about the student and their family.

“In a traditional setting, the teacher gets to know only the student in the context of the subject that we are teaching, we understand what the student does well and what they need to work on, but that’s it,” she said. “In the online classroom, because of the parent involvement that is required, we get to know the entire student as a member of a family.”

According to Daphne, teaching the various levels of math at Falcon View Connections Academy will give her the rare opportunity to see how students master the principles and concepts at the middle school level and apply them later in their high school years.