Capitol Day

Last week my family and I, along with my friend Courteney, traveled to Columbus to participate in the Ohio Family and Friends eSchool Coalition Capitol Day. Many other eSchool families from across Ohio traveled to Columbus for this event as well.

The main goal of this event was to talk to our Legislators about school choice and how important it is to eSchoolers like us. We spent a lot of time talking with them and answering their questions. We tried to tell our personal "success" stories and how our eSchools have helped us be where we are today.

With Representative Barnes

One of our other goals was to address all the myths about eSchooling. Many of the Legislators asked about socialization, if we spend all our time on the computer, and if we have real teachers. We explained to them that our eSchools are public schools and that we do have time to step away from the computers and see our friends, as well as participate in activities inside and outside the school.

We also did personal presentations for the Legislators. We had our school, courses, and other eSchool components pulled up on laptops so that we could explain how they were used and how they were a part of our school day. We explained what our typical school days were like and we also showed them how our teachers use online "classrooms" (Like Elluminate) to provide live lessons or reviews.

With Representative Beck

By the end of the day we had talked to nearly all of the Legislators that were available to meet with us and answered all of their questions confidently in hopes that they would understand why our eSchools are important to us.

After our nearly 8 hour day spent talking about our eSchools (We even joked that we could recite everything we talked about in our sleep at this point. ;D), we were finally able to relax, hang out, and act like every other teenager out there.