LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- A Louisville grandmother's frustration with virtual learning led to an educational breakthrough.
Tysha McDougal's frustrations started in the comfort of her own home.
"August rolled around and NTI started," said McDougal, who like many parents had concerns about helping her granddaughter with the math portion of nontraditional instruction.
The frustration came to a head while McDougal was listening to her granddaughter's seventh-grade math class at the Phoenix School of Discovery.
"She would get the lesson; I got the lesson," McDougal said. "When I got the lesson, I could make sure she understood the lesson."
For a while, however, McDougal didn't understand the lesson. On the other end of the computer, her granddaughter's teacher occasionally saw an extra head and heard an extra voice in her virtual classroom.
"Gradually, I'd start to see her grandma kind of looking into the screen," said Heather Levinson, a math instructor at Phoenix School of Discovery. "Kind of go from being a voice in the background to being a face on the screen, occasionally."
Tysha McDougal checks in on her granddaughter's virtual math class. (WDRB photo)
Eventually, McDougal was the one staying after class to ask questions.
"I was like, 'Well, what does that m mean and what does that y mean?'" she said.
As McDougal started to catch on, the grandmother decided to share an old secret.
"I waited until everybody left class, and I told her that I wanted to talk to her," she said. "And I just told her; I said, 'Ms. Levinson, look, I dropped out of high school 33 years ago and these past six weeks I have learned so much.'"
"She said, 'I feel really good about this. This is the most confident I've ever felt doing math,'" Levinson recalled.
Heather Levinson, a math instructor at Phoenix School of Discovery (Courtesy of JCPS)
In fact, McDougal was so confident that she is now enrolled in Jefferson County Public Schools Adult & Continuing Education classes. In high school, McDougal did well in all of her other classes, but math was always a challenge. Now, with a little help from her new tutor, McDougal plans to earn her high school diploma the old fashioned way.
"And she promised me that she'd be there for me," McDougal said.
Tysha McDougal's frustrations with her granddaughter's math class led her to reenroll in classes and pursue her high school diploma. (WDRB photo)
Levinson does not want any of the credit, but she's excited about helping McDougal earn her high school diploma.
"It is very much a gift to me to get the affirmation that something that I am doing matters," Levinson said. "I am delighted that I was able to be that person to give that gift to her."
Now that she's officially a JCPS student, McDougal will start evening classes in the near future.
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