Columbia Virtual Academy: Weekly Contact

Enrollment in Columbia Virtual Academy comes with certain requirements on the part of both the student and the parent. The student requirement is that they must be in contact with their "teacher" each week. This is can be done either in person, over the phone, or via email. We use email for almost all of our weekly contacts.

Emailing the teacher is simple. The teachers provide three simple questions for the student to answer. The first one usually asks the student to tell about their studies in a certain subject. The latter two are usually optional get-to-know you type questions. The student can either answer these questions, or write about something else that is school-related. We sometimes ignore the questions in favor of telling our teacher about a cool project or field trip that we do that week.

This week, my kids answered our teacher's questions. Sam's answers always crack me up, especially when he does them without my help (parents can type for the student). Here's what he said:

1. Tell me about what you have been working on in history or science this week. What was your favorite activity? In history I learned about Gaul and how it was renamed France and the capital city Paris and about four different kinds of people living there. Here are the names of two of them; Romans and Franks. 2. How many of the 50 states have you been to? Which ones? I have been to three states. Washington where we live, Oregon, and California. 3. If you could learn about anything, what would you study? If I could learn about anything I would like to learn more about the the planets and the milky way; I bet the milky way has milk.

I don't know about you but that last one about the milk way is just cute and funny to me.

The teacher in me sees the grammar we need to cover. I see a run-on sentence, missing commas, and misuse of the semi-colon. I do think it is neat that he is trying to use semi-colons. He recently asked me about them; he wanted to know what they were for and how they were used. At least he's trying to apply his new knowledge!

And back to my point. His answers are pretty short. The first one doesn't completely answer her question. His grammar is not perfect. However, this contact is just fine. We'll get credit for attendance for the week and continue our status of satisfactory progress. And, as the Staple's commercials say:

That was easy!