What makes blended learning different in an Opportunity Culture? As two pioneering high school teachers in North Carolina show in new vignettes, blended learning gives them a tool to reach 40 to 100 percent more students per class period with great teaching.
Students alternated days between classroom instruction with their blended-learning teacher and working from home or in a supervised computer lab. The teachers reached more students on the “off” days, but with class sizes staying the same or even smaller.
The two we profile—American history teacher Scott Nolt and precalculus teacher Caitlyn Gironda—both exceeded growth targets while reaching more students, despite having less face-to-face time with students. They earned thousands of dollars in extra pay for their roles, funded through regular budgets.
In the vignettes and an accompanying video, Nolt and Gironda share why they took on the challenge of pioneering this use of blended learning to reach more students, how it worked, and what they learned about how their students learn—and how they adjusted their teaching as they strived to continue to reach all students with excellence.