Director of Curriculum at an independent-study charter school

Our independent-study online charter school supports students in grades TK-12. We have just under 5,000 students, most of whom are learning at home with a learning coach. Students meet regularly with a credentialed teacher, either online or in-person, and each teacher has about 30 students.

It’s important to us that we provide access to diverse educational models – and one of the enrichment options we have is Touch-type Read and Spell (TTRS).

If a student is struggling with letters or sounds, their teacher will ask them to take TTRS for extra literacy support. We find the intervention team often uses TTRS when working with students who have learning difficulties, but any student who wants to learn typing skills has the option to use the program.

With the way everything is moving technologically, typing is an important skill to have, as many of our students use typing for other coursework.

We have been operating within this model for eight years and we have over 100 curriculum options. One of the reasons parents like us so much is we listen to our community to help us ensure we have a range of available programs to meet all students’ needs.

If we hear someone say a certain app is worth exploring, we look into it. If there are no available programs, we work with our teachers to develop them.

A number of these, TTRS included, take a multi-sensory approach to learning. We find triggering as many senses as possible can help reinforce skills and foster more engagement in learning.