Building a Good Teacher Connection Is Key

The following article is part of a series of blog posts from the Holcombe family. Peter, Kathy, and their Keystone sixth grader, Abby, are sharing their adventures with Learning Liftoff as they journey on an 18-month tour of the country’s national parks. And, Abby is taking her high-quality education on the road with The Keystone School, a fully accredited, online private school.

Since kindergarten, Abby has always had a great relationship with her teachers and her online Keystone School is no exception. We both believe that building a helpful teacher connection at school is important to her academic success. Her science teacher, Mrs. Dent, not only is an excellent teacher, but has also taken the time to get to know her on a more personal level. This December, Mrs. Dent helped Abby figure out how to make personalized coffee mugs for her grandparents for Christmas.

Her social studies teacher, Mrs. Prisk, ALWAYS seems to be available and ready to help. On a recent assignment, Abby was asked to find ten images that represented Roman times and write a descriptive paragraph about each image. Filtering through millions of images online quickly became overwhelming, and Abby wasn’t quite sure how to get started. Just minutes after Abby reached out for help, Mrs. Prisk responded with some simple solutions that made a big project feel very manageable. These two incredible women are just a couple of the reasons we love Keystone Online. Here are Abby’s thoughts about her two favorite teachers . . .

“When I switched from a brick-and-mortar school to The Keystone School online, I was worried how the communication would be. I wondered if my mom would be able to answer my questions [about the assignments], or maybe they wouldn’t get answered at all, or I would never get a reply before the assignment was due! Oh my! I worried too much!

Luckily, when I started my first class I felt a big wave of relief because all the communication was so easy. I quickly found a favorite teacher, Mrs. Dent! She was just as amazing as my [previous] brick-and-mortar teacher connection! Mrs. Dent has created many times where we would just talk for hours about random and funny stuff. Eventually, as the time would whisk by, I would say goodbye and continue on to the task I had originally asked about. One time, she helped me understand how to make the coffee mugs I was to give to my grandparents this past holiday season. Mrs. Dent is just one of the amazing teachers who teach me this year!

My other favorite teacher, (I finally have reached the day where I have more than one teacher!!! YIPEE!!) Mrs. Prisk, is amazing too! She really helps me break down my projects so I can understand them better. This helps me not be so overwhelmed when I work on bigger projects! With my Roman project, for example, she explained that I needed to get ten images and have one paragraph explaining how each image fits into what I have been learning about and why I like them and chose them!

All in all, I love all of my teachers. They really help me understand my assignments and almost instantly reply to any questions I might have! This is one of the many reasons why the online Keystone School is a good fit for me!”