Connect Canyons
Learning is about making connections, and we invite you to learn and connect with us. Connect Canyons is a show about what we teach in Canyons District, how we teach, and why. We get up close and personal with some of the people who make our schools great: students, teachers, principals, parents, and more. We meet national experts, too. And we spotlight the “connection makers” — personalities, programs and prospects — we find compelling and inspiring.
Connect Canyons
Ep 80: Enroll Now in CSD’s Online Summer School, Camps
Whether you’re a parent looking for a fun, intellectually challenging way for your kids to spend their summer, or you’re a high school student desiring to retake a course or get a jump your studies for next year, Canyons School District offers a rich variety of summer learning opportunities for students of all ages. In this episode of Connect Canyons, we talk with Amy Boettger, the administrator who oversees Canyons Virtual Academy and CSD’s Community Education programs. Parents: this episode is for you!
Welcome to Connect Canyons, a podcast sponsored by Canyon School District. This is a show about what we teach, how we teach and why we get up close and personal with some of the people who make our schools great Students, teachers, principals, parents and more. We meet national experts too. Learning is about making connections, so connect with us.
Speaker 2:Whether you're a parent looking for a fun, intellectually challenging way for your kids to spend their summer, or you're a high school student desiring to get a jump on your studies for next year, canyon School District offers a rich variety of summer learning opportunities for students of all ages. You're listening to Connect Canyons. I'm your host, kirsten Stewart, and I'm joined here today by Amy Bettker, principal of the Canyon's Virtual Academy, which administers a good portion of our summer programming. Welcome to Connect Canyons, amy. Thank you so much, kirsten. All right summer.
Speaker 2:As a parent, I have to say this is some of the most stressful time of the year, because you want to do all these vacations and then you've got to, like, in between, figure out what to do to keep your kids engaged and busy and learning. And here at Canyons, though, we've got our parents back, so we're here for them. We are your source for summer learning and fun. So let's start with the Canyons Virtual Academy. You're a student, you're on the go, but no matter, we got you. You know your high school student can jump on their studies virtually and keep up with their studies, or maybe even play catch-up from pretty much anywhere right, just through our online CVA. How does that work?
Speaker 3:Absolutely so it works. Any student in Canyons District, any high school student, can take any of our Canyons Virtual courses for free, and that is whether they need it for original credit if they're looking to do credit replacement, or we had literally introduced, within the last two weeks, credit recovery courses. So, instead of having to go somewhere and buy packets from somebody in the community, they can go on and do some credit recovery courses.
Speaker 2:Okay, so let's talk about those definitions. So credit replacement would be a class you took, you got a grade for it, but you want a better grade, exactly.
Speaker 3:And then credit recoveries.
Speaker 3:You didn't finish the class Correct and credit replacement. You'll want to see your counselor and make sure you filled out the paperwork that you're intending to replace a course. You can't do it after the fact, so make sure you do that ahead of time. It's also good to check with a counselor to make sure you're taking the courses that you actually need for graduation. We have seen in the past sometimes students will take a course that they've already taken and they don't need it for credit recovery, so make sure you check with your counselor.
Speaker 2:Okay, and that's true, for even if you want to get a jump on your schedule, do you need to just check with your counselor as well? Exactly, yes, yes, and what are some of the courses, what kinds of courses do you offer? And then maybe even like what are some of the more popular courses in?
Speaker 3:the summer? Oh, great question. We have everything from honors classes in the summer to just regular classes. We don't offer AP during the summer, okay, because those teachers are probably resting and relaxing. But so for those courses, just again check with your counselor and see what you need and you could do it in the fall. Maybe you could do it in the fall right. Some students want to graduate earlier, some students don't want to have a first or fifth period, and so they'll take classes so they have a lighter schedule in school. But that's one option. We have kids that have emailed us and said hey, we're in Australia right now, we're visiting with family and we need a course reset or we need some help. So kids are really accessing the courses and doing them from literally all over the world.
Speaker 2:Wow, yeah, well, I know too, just with my experience with my own children. There's actually even PE courses that you can do Correct, there's.
Speaker 3:PE courses. Every regular ed class. They you know language arts, math, science, social studies, electives. We have drawing, we have photography, gosh, there's just a lot of courses that we have. Soon, it's not ready for prime time yet, but we soon are going to be introducing a music class, so students that have that experience, either singing or playing an instrument, can go in and meet some of the competencies. The teacher will grade those and they can actually get credit and music as well.
Speaker 2:Wow that's amazing. That's amazing. What a time saver. So summer courses we're talking just about high school students right now. Middle school content, not for the summer, correct, correct?
Speaker 3:We have middle school courses and middle school teachers during the school year but not during the summer. That's correct, okay.
Speaker 2:And I think the time to sign up is probably now.
Speaker 3:Yes, sign up is already open. Access to the courses begin on May 31st and they need to be done with their courses by August 1st.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:So that gives about eight, nine weeks or so where a student can crank through as many courses as they wanna try to do in the summer.
Speaker 2:And is there a deadline to sign up, or could they just up until?
Speaker 3:August. Pretty much up until August we try to limit registration. I don't have the exact date but probably by mid-July we're gonna close down registration, just so they still have a week or two to be able to finish those courses. Okay, and average time in course will take a student. Some students are really. They already know the material, they go really fast, but we try to have them estimate between 15 and 20 hours somewhere in there For the whole course For a whole quarter credit course, that's amazing when you say high school students incoming eighth graders can also take advantage of this.
Speaker 3:That's exactly right. Incoming eighth graders that finish up in May, so I'm no longer an eighth grader.
Speaker 2:I guess they should call them freshmen or incoming ninth graders right, but they finished eighth. Yeah, Exactly, that's exactly right. That's really cool. Anything else you wanna mention about CVA?
Speaker 3:You know, just emphasizing those new credit recovery courses. It's a little bit easier to access, so you're not having to go try to find a packet somewhere. But just even though it's an online course, sometimes students think, oh, it's gonna be easier. And it's not really easier it is. Credit recovery courses are a little abbreviated, so they're not as long as a full course would be, but they're also not super easy either. So make sure you give yourself plenty of time to get in. Every single, every single Canyon's virtual course has a proctored final exam. So you go through, you'll take everything, you'll have a teacher you'll work with, pass all the modules, but you'll have to either have to come in, schedule a test and make sure that you pass that test in order to get credit for the course.
Speaker 2:I like what you're saying. There is.
Speaker 3:It does take someone who's self-driven and committed to seeing this through right, and you've got to still show that you've mastered the content Exactly yeah, and and I would encourage any student that's interested in taking an online course, whether it's with us or another provider, to put a schedule together for themselves. You know so I'm gonna work on two courses this summer, so I would suggest that you plan two to three hours, two to three times a week. Have a regular schedule, kind of like it's a job or a regular class and you'll get done in plenty of time.
Speaker 3:Please feel free to reach out to us, either directly to Canyon's virtual if you're interested in online courses, or reach out to community education, and we'll be glad to answer questions.
Speaker 2:What is your enrollment like? I mean, these are really popular, aren't they? And then, with CVA, enrollment is also. I mean, it's also a very popular offering for kids from all over the state, all over the state of Utah.
Speaker 3:So if you're listening to this and you don't have a student high school age student that goes to Canyon's district, do not worry, we serve as students from St George all the way up to Logan and farther north, east and west.
Speaker 3:So we'd love to have you and hundreds of them a year, right Hundreds a year. Canyon's virtual classes are unlimited. We don't have a cap on size. Oh yeah, we will limit students sometimes to up to four classes only because we don't want students to get overwhelmed. We notice students that are most successful if they start a course. Maybe they're in one or two courses and see them through first, instead of jumping around for multiple courses.
Speaker 2:And really every class is taught by a licensed, certified teacher who has an expertise in this kind of delivery. Right of education.
Speaker 3:That's exactly right. So they are very well trained and excellent online teachers. They know how to work with students. They know how to help parents and families navigate. We have a full tech staff, so if you're having trouble logging on or connectivity issues, talk to our tech team. They're around all summer. And I did want to also mention I believe we're one of the only two maybe the only program, but at least two programs available for online learning in the summer in the entire state.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, and I know too that we've been doing it for some time, so one of the longer ones.
Speaker 3:Yes, we started in 2011, one of the very first online providers in Utah under a new law that came on the books back then in 2012, and so, yeah, we've been doing it a while. We kind of think we know what we're doing and love to help students.
Speaker 2:So we talked about when they can sign up. We can include in the show notes maybe a link to where they can register, and that'll make it super easy for everyone. Perfect, let's talk summer, summer camps, summer camps.
Speaker 3:so we have Canyon's Community Ed classes and we've got some exciting summer camps coming. We will have four different weeks of summer camps. They're fabulous for families who maybe are traveling or, you know, we don't have child care in the summer, but our kids are bored. They're driving us nuts. What's nice is most of our three of those four weeks will actually be in July. So you know, go have fun in June and maybe do a camp in June, but three of those weeks are in July. Okay, and those camps will be at either Glacier Hills or at Brookwood, I believe that. So we have a camp starting the week of June 24th, a camp starting the week of July 8th, one starting the week of July 15th and one the week of July 29th.
Speaker 2:Wow, busy, busy. I was looking a little bit at the schedule. There's like really kind of a huge breadth of offerings. I mean everything from like arts to robotics, right, like kind of there's one about being being a mad scientist.
Speaker 3:Exactly yes. And then we have a little bit of sports. We have basketball camp. So if you have some folks that want to get better at their basketball skills, we've got soccer going on, hip hop and tumbling magic, engineering and robotics, again, like you said, art we've got tennis, we've got something called power chess, and so just kind of a wide variety of things that hopefully will keep students interested, engaged and give parents and families a little bit of a break.
Speaker 2:Yeah, those brains active right, exactly. And then I think all, pretty much all ages, ages six to twelve. Is that what I? Said All ages yeah, six to twelve. I know that we really there is like a small fee for these, but we do try to keep it super affordable. I've taken advantage of them in the past.
Speaker 3:Exactly yes and some camps. Some range anywhere from thirty five dollars on up. It's a pretty good deal. Yeah, we have morning sessions, we have afternoon sessions, some kids that will do both morning and afternoon. We encourage families to plan on having them bring a bag lunch every day. We'll have adult supervision for them, and so that's kind of nice for students to, you know, get away from mom and dad and mom and dad to kind of get a little bit of rake Right.
Speaker 2:I love it. Registration is open now for those as well. Right, so do they fill up on a first come, first or basis? They do so if you're interested.
Speaker 3:You want to get on our website. Go to Canny's district, look for community education and you can check out the specific classes, when they're held, where they're held and just more details on cost those kinds of things. They're really popular. So we but we limit it to we like to have one adult for every 12 kids so, and most of the classes are between 12 and 15. So we generally will have two adults in each of our summer classes.
Speaker 2:We'll include a link to that as well in the show notes so that people can find that the registration information and then just a full course right Menu of what's available, right. So, and I think that pretty much covers. But I do know like a lot of our schools have a lot of different summer options too. I'm thinking of like sports camps and woodworking, I think, some of them robotics, and they can just check directly with their schools for that information, exactly. Yeah, so well, wonderful, well, thank you for being here today.
Speaker 3:If there's anything else I've missed, I know I think you've got it and absolutely my pleasure to be here. You've been listening to Connect Canyons.
Speaker 2:Again, I'm your host, Kirsten Stewart. If you have any ideas for topics you'd like us to discuss, please reach out to us at communications at canyonsdistrictorg.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to this episode of Connect Canyons. Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram at canyonsdistrict, or on our website, canyonsdistrictorg.
