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Kali Slusser was severely stressed. The former Tafoya Elementary School teacher was facing a ton of uncertainly after receiving a pink slip while working for the Woodland school district.
To top it off, her husband Greg, teaching at Zamora Elementary at the time, was put in the same predicament.
In March of 2009, the Slussers were among 26,590 teachers in California that were notified of potential layoffs after more than $11 billion in state cuts were issued to education.
Though the Slussers both got canned, they were fortunate to find work before the next school year started.
So it turns out getting laid off wasn’t so bad after all.
Greg found a job at a middle school in Sacramento as a science teacher and Kali was hired by California Virtual Academies, a public K-12, tuition-free charter online school that is also known as CAVA.
Being hired for the online position meant Slusser no longer had to spend her days in a classroom: She now teaches from her home office.
“They know most of us have families,” Slusser said of the virtual school. “So we’re able to work at home with our families.
“It was a good turnaround. I’m making less money, but I get to
be with my family at home. I get to spend more time with my family. It became a good opportunity.”
For Slusser, less money and more time with her kids, Daisy, 4, and Zenon, 9 months, is a terrific tradeoff even though she never imagined teaching online when she got her first job in the field 10 years ago.
“It’s a foreign concept to a lot of people,” she said.
Slusser, a Woodland resident who was born in Colorado and graduated UC Davis in 2001 as a psychology major, works Monday through Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
She specializes in early literacy and reading intervention. She’s currently teaching about 60 kids in groups of five at a time in half-hour blocks. Most of her students, who are in need of reading help, vary from kindergarten to the third grade.
She gives lessons on her computer, which has a webcam so her students can see the reading materials and read along. When her students sign in online, the school receives funds from the state in a similar fashion to a child filling a seat in a real class setting.
While Slusser, who also taught in Fairfield for six years in the Suisun Unified School District, doesn’t have to do typical grading, she spends a good portion of her working hours setting goals for her students and filling out paperwork to track their progress. She’s often busy doing paperwork after she puts her own children to bed.
Though she never sees her students or meets them, she can hear them through her computer. And she constantly chats with the parents of her students over the phone to give progress updates.
The fact that she never gets to know her students in person is one of the few things Slusser misses from the traditional classroom setting.
“I miss seeing their cute little faces,” she said.
Behavioral problems aren’t an issue in the online classroom, Slusser said, although she has had to call the parents of a fifth-grader who was being defiant in the past. Apparently cheating isn’t an issue either, but Slusser has wondered if her students were getting help from others.
In the future, Slusser isn’t sure if she’ll wind up going back to teaching at a brick-and-mortar school. But she may send her daughter Daisy to an online school, as she sees numerous advantages to the online setting.
“The lessons are mastery based,” she said. “The student only moves forward in the curriculum when they have learned the topic, enabling them to move faster or slower through certain parts of lessons.”
Slusser said online classes can be a good alternative for students who are bullied, live in unsafe communities or are “slipping through the cracks at their own school.”
Susan White, a mother of two in Davis, sent her son to California Virtual Academies after he was bullied at Marguerite Montgomery Elementary School.
White said other students were kicking her son, who is now in the second grade and started the online school in February of 2011. The bullying, White said, was so bad that she started attending recess to watch out for her son’s safety.
“I don’t have to worry about his welfare at school,” she said of her decision for him to attend the virtual school. “It was too stressful.”
White said her son likes the interactive aspect of the school, along with the cartoons and programs incorporated for educational purposes.
“You always know what your child is learning in a home school as opposed to a public school,” said White, who added that she didn’t recall seeing bullies until she was in high school.
White has recommended several of her friends to send their children to online schools. She’s planning on enrolling her 4-year-old daughter at California Virtual Academies when it’s time for her to go to kindergarten.
Other advantages of online schooling, Slusser said, include the wide variety of subject matter that is taught – such as music, art, history, language arts, science, foreign languages and math.
“Not all schools have time to teach all of this,” Slusser said.
Although students in online classrooms don’t interact with their peers while learning, Slusser said they can still have fulfilling social lives by seeking out extra activities to stay involved in.
Slusser’s daughter, who won’t start kindergarten until fall of 2013, can already read thanks to watching her mother in action. Aside from being able to be a stay-at-home mom while working, there are other perks to Slusser’s job.
The online school operates under a performance-based system, unlike the Woodland Joint Unified School District, which gives priority to teachers with tenure when cuts need to be made. So if future slashes were made to education, Slusser would have the opportunity to stay on board at California Virtual Academies despite a lack of seniority. Both Greg and Kali Slusser, who moved to Woodland about a year and a half ago from Davis where they went to college, had only been teaching at the WJUSD for a year before they were laid off.
All of the teachers at California Virtual Academies are credentialed, according to its website.
Slusser holds several degrees and credentials. She has a master’s degree in curriculum and instruction from the University of Phoenix, also an online school. She has credentials from Sacramento State and Sonoma State universities and a teaching certificate from Boise State University. At UC Davis, she minored in exercise science.
Slusser is one of more than a handful of online teachers located in Woodland and Davis. She said they all frequently meet up together to collaborate and exchange ideas.
Slusser joked that maybe her husband will become an online teacher too and spend more time with the kids.
But she quickly added: “We only need one of us to stay at home.”
‘Macaroni Mom’
The Internet-savvy Slusser has also found a way to be a teacher of parents.
She used to blog about parenting techniques. She’s now moved on to being a “Macaroni Mom” for a free national newsletter called “Macaroni Kid.”
The site is a family-oriented, weekly newsletter that gathers information to promote local events and businesses. In a way, it’s similar to the “Bulletin Board” feature in The Daily Democrat, in that Slusser allows people to submit events to her to be published.
“I don’t know everything going on in town and people keep me informed,” said Slusser, who has been a “Macaroni Mom” since July 2011.
There are hundreds of different “Macaroni Kid” websites and “Macaroni Moms” throughout the U.S., each serving a different community. Slusser serves Woodland and Davis under one website, woodland.macaronikid.com.
In her latest newsletter, Slusser writes, “I sincerely hope that everything that I publish on my Mac Kid site, helps you to become a better parent to your kids.”
Typical things that can be found on the newsletter include recipes, crafts, parenting advice, business reviews and activities for children. She throws in things going on at the Gibson House and the Woodland Opera House to when YMCA sign-ups are happening or the latest news from Woodland Gymnastics.
“As an educator, I think kids need to be involved in different activities,” Slusser said. “… I’m happy to support them and promote them.”
Slusser spends about five to 10 hours a week on the newsletter. The website has several sponsors that help her pay for web hosting. She said she’s breaking even on the gig but considers it more of a hobby than a job. She often uses a quid pro quo approach, doing reviews of shows in exchange for free tickets.
Slusser also sees the “Macaroni Kid” as a service that promotes keeping money within Woodland and Davis.
“I feel like I’m helping the community. I’m a pretty community-oriented person,” she said. “I try to keep all my business in town. I spend all my money in town. I really believe in that.”
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Article source: http://www.dailydemocrat.com/news/ci_20001884
