Classroom is Virtual But Learning is Real: Teacher to be Honored for Pioneering Education

For five years, Middletown High School's David Reynolds has encouraged students to broaden their education through online learning. On Thursday, he will be presented with an award from VHS Collaborative, a nationwide nonprofit collaborative that allows students to take classes from around the globe.

Reynolds, the coordinator of career and technical education, says virtual high school is like a cyber classroom.

"It offers students hundreds of online learning courses that significantly adds more choices to their course planning and rigorous, 21st-century learning," he says.

There are hundreds of courses, Reynolds says, in the VHS model, like the course he teaches at MHS, Investing in the Stock Market, to Mandarin Chinese, advanced placement calculus, astronomy, genetics and much more.

"Middletown's partnership with VHS allows us to offer our students more options than the physical space of our building or our budgets allow for," Reynolds says, adding, even nuclear physics classes are open to students.

VHS classes are offered in several dozen municipalities across Connecticut, including Cromwell, Haddam-Killingworth, Portland, Valley Regional, and Nathan Hale-Ray high schools, as well as Thomas Edison Middle School in Meriden.

"The courses also allow students to work independently, collaborate with students from around the world, and showcase their abilities to use technology and solve problems," Reynolds says

And teachers learn new ways to teach and use technology with students from around the world.

Each year, the program expands and offers even more choices for students. 

On Thursday at noon, representatives from the Maynard, Mass.,-based collaborative will honor Reynolds for his work over the last five years.