English teacher Kristin Kipp of the 21st Century Virtual Academy in Golden, Colo., was named the nation’s second-annual National Online Teacher of the Year Thursday night at the Southern Regional Education Board’s ed-tech teaching and learning symposium in Atlanta.
Kipp has taught 11th and 12th graders online for the past three years for the virtual school, which is part of the 84,000-student school system in Jefferson County, situated just west of Denver, and also serves students statewide. She is also a course reviewer, reviser, and adjunct English teacher with Colorado Online Learning, a collaborative online education venture of several districts in the state.
The competition is co-sponsored by the SREB and the International Association for K-12 Online Learning, or iNACOL. In its second year, it featured 65 nominees from public schools and state-sponsored virtual schools in 25 states.
Kipp has nine total years of teaching experience between the brick-and-mortar and virtual classroom, and with her experience insists online options are vital for many students.
“I teach at-risk students, gifted and talented students, elite student athletes, pregnant teens, and teen moms,” Kipp said in a press release. “For all of these students, online education opens up opportunities that would otherwise not exist.”
As the winner, Kipp will get to spend a day in April with Karen Cator, the director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education, and in November will receive an all-expenses-paid trip to iNACOL’s Virtual School Symposium in Indianapolis.