PORT LUDLOW — Insight School’s National Teacher of the Year worked hard last year — putting in about 60 hours per week — but she rarely left her Port Ludlow home to go to work.
“I put in a lot of time to the job,” Mishele Newkirk-Smith said.
“But my commute time is less than a minute.”
That’s because she works for an online high school.
Insight School of Washington is an accredited, diploma-granting, public high school that serves its students online.
The school, launched two years ago through the Quillayute Valley School District in Forks, served about 600 students in the 2006-2007 school year.
In the 2007-2008 school year, 1,300 students were enrolled in the classes, which offer a certified staff-to-student ratio of “just under 21 to 1,” according to the Insight Web site at www.go2ischool.net/.
The national award was unexpected, Newkirk-Smith said.
“It came out of the blue.
“I guess it came because I am always looking for new ways to teach and have fun.”
