AT RANKIN SCHOOL of the Narrows in Iona, Grade 12 students are subtly discouraged from dating each other. You see, if everyone paired off in a graduating class of nine people, it would make for a pretty small prom.

Rankin, enrolment 138, is on a piece of real estate that would be too expensive to build a school on if it wasn’t a four-hour drive plus a 40-second ferry ride from Halifax. The playground, soccer field and most classrooms have breathtaking views of the Bras d’Or Lakes. Instruction in Gaelic is offered in every grade of this Primary to Grade 12 school, where, in the high-school wing, every student has a locker but none has a lock.

Caitlin Bennett’s biggest class has six people in it. Her smallest, one. There isn’t even a teacher in the room when Caitlin takes calculus. She is one of 358 students this semester enrolled in the Nova Scotia Virtual School.

“People have been doing it at my school for a long time,” said Caitlin of the virtual learning. “I knew I wanted to take calculus so that was the option.”

The virtual school offers 17 courses in subjects like sociology, visual arts and oceans, mainly to students who attend schools like Rankin that can’t offer the variety of courses that bigger schools can.

Elizabeth MacNeil, vice-principal at Rankin, said the virtual school appeals to students looking for something her school cannot offer.

“We’re very limited in what we can give. We can’t do the calculus, we just don’t have the manpower to do it,” said MacNeil, while warning that virtual school isn’t not for everyone.

“They have to be self-motivated. We’ve actually had kids who we’ve allowed in, because they wanted to take the courses. We had reservations about them taking it because they weren’t really motivated kids, and they ended up dropping it. It’s a lot of work, and it’s all on their own.”

Caitlin, who admits to being a “math geek,” also plays soccer, reads and serves in church and works at a nearby marina in the summer. She’s been admitted to both the nursing and science programs at Cape Breton University for next fall. Calculus wasn’t a prerequisite, but she wants to keep her options open.

For her virtual classes, she goes to a room in the school equipped with two computers, and logs on to that day’s assignment, which includes a list of tasks to accomplish.

“It’s a lot more independent, for sure. I’ll Google concepts and try to figure stuff out on my own, or read the book. I never would have read my textbook in any other class, but I’ll sit down and try to find what I’m doing,” she said.

“We’re assigned a partner at the beginning of the year, and every time we have a group assignment I have to, through email, set up a time with him to meet in the chat room and do the group assignment. If we have a discrepancy, we talk about why.”

Caitlin, who says “I get kind of silly over marks,” is one of two virtual school students at Rankin. Although she is in contact with her calculus teacher almost whenever she wants through email, it’s very unlike having a teacher in the same room. She thinks the experience will stand her in good stead when she starts university.

“Not just the material that I’m covering, or the math part of it, but the fact that it’s so much work, and the time management that goes along with it, is definitely beneficial for next year,” she said.

The Department of Education offers the virtual school program at 52 sites around the province, from Yarmouth to Neil’s Harbour. Sue Taylor-Foley, the department’s director of Learning Resources and Technology Services, said some form of distance education has been offered in Nova Scotia since 1917.

“At that time, they utilized radio and then they moved into a mail system, then to television as the years went on,” she said. “And it evolved, of course, to take advantage of the current technology, the Internet.”

The Strait Regional school board first offered online distance learning in the 1990s, and about 2003 the Chignecto Central board started to offer online courses, introducing video conferencing at that time. Today, the virtual school is a partnership that includes all the province’s boards.

“We have teachers in the Nova Scotia Virtual School who are residing in Cape Breton, Chignecto and the Strait,” Taylor-Foley said.

“But next year, we will have a teacher from Halifax and we’re really excited about that, because that teacher will be actually teaching some (French) immersion courses in the sciences area. So we’re quite thrilled with that opportunity for students across the province.”

All school boards will eventually provide teachers for the program, and the courses offered are chosen in collaboration with the boards. This year’s budget for the program is $1.77-million, taking into account salaries, course development, equipment and training, and also includes online professional development opportunities for teachers. Taylor-Foley said the best candidates for the virtual school are kids who have some technological ability and are independent workers.

“I’ve witnessed some students who, at first glance, might not seem like your typical candidate, but they’re so incredibly interested in the subject matter, to pursue that in a post-secondary area, and want to get a feel for it before they make that kind of career choice,” she said.

“We would like to ensure within the next three years that we’re able to have enough courses online that a student could, theoretically, get a high-school diploma that way. This is not meant to replace regular schooling, of course, and that’s not the goal of this. But there are students who may have medical issues or other issues. Generally speaking, it’s to fill that void where a student can’t get that course at the school.”

Judy Davis, the principal at Oxford Regional Education Centre, says the virtual school allows administrators at small schools some leeway in scheduling and human resources.

“It’s huge,” said the principal. “Scheduling is always tough. Virtual high does open a lot of doors.”

A teacher at Oxford wrote the virtual school physics course, and four students there are enrolled in virtual school courses. Madison Swan is taking pre-calculus, and has already been awarded a scholarship to Mount Saint Vincent University, where she’ll study nutrition and play basketball.

“I needed to take my art credit last semester in order to graduate, but I wanted to take pre-cal so the only way I could take it was to take it online,” Madison said. “For me, it’s harder because I need to be taught everything step by step, especially in math. This way, you only get to talk to the teacher once a week so I find I kind of have to teach myself concepts, and it’s really hard.

“I’m definitely more motivated. Like, I have to go and do my stuff. At the beginning of the year, I fell so far behind, but I realized I actually have to go to class and self-motivate myself, because there’s nobody telling me I have to do it. I think I’m a better student now.”

Madisonisn’t Oxford’s only virtual-school success story. Principal Davis is also proud of Jenny Hall, who takes two buses every day from her home in Springhill to Oxford, where she takes two online courses. Jenny said she was first interested in the virtual African-Canadian studies course.

“Right now, we’re learning about the slave trade, which we also learned about in global history and Canadian history, but not in this depth,” Jenny said. “In African Canadian studies, there are two other girls in my class that are also in my school … so that’s our group for small e-chats. One of them is a pretty close friend so we discuss our work and help each other out, sitting there on different computers, doing our work. I don’t like the Macs at school, so I tend to do a lot of the work at home on a PC tablet.”

Davis describes Jenny as “determined. She has her goals set and she’s focused … she’s ready” for the future, which for Jenny includes a criminology course, application to the RCMP and maybe the study of corrections.

“I just don’t see myself behind a desk,” said Jenny, who fits sports and a part-time job around her academics. She also takes a multi-media virtual school course, and her only regret centres around how easy it is for her parents to keep tabs on her work.

“They get at me if I’m missing an assignment because they have my password to go on and see. That wasn’t very smart.”

(bspurr@herald.ca)