Full Circle Moment

Full Circle Moment
A first note from Village Virtual CEO, Dr. Heather Fisher

Thirty years ago, I walked into my first classroom and never really left. I've been a teacher, a master teacher, an assistant principal, and more recently, the founding principal of a virtual school that didn't exist until a small team of us decided it should. Along the way, I picked up one belief that hasn't budged: kids learn best when the adults around them never stop learning either.

That's what makes this next chapter, as I step into the role of CEO at Village Virtual, feel like a full circle moment. 

If you don't know Village Virtual yet, here's the short version. We're a team that partners with school districts to build virtual learning programs that actually work for students, for teachers, and for the families trying to make the right call for their kids. That mission has been alive here since Debi Crabtree founded the company, and it's the reason I said yes when this opportunity came along.

What I'm Bringing With Me

Before this, I spent years as the founding Principal of the Germantown Online Academy of Learning (GOAL), where I helped build a virtual school from the ground up: the academics, the operations, the strategy, and the ongoing work of training teachers to teach well online. That last part is its own discipline, and it takes real practice to do it well. I've also been a Master Teacher for Shelby County Schools, an Assistant Principal at Dogwood Elementary, and a Harvard Project Zero Fellow, an experience that later led me to co-found Project Zero–Memphis to bring that kind of professional learning to more educators across our region. 

None of that happened alone. I've had the chance to represent more than 8,000 educators as President of the Shelby County Education Association, to be named Shelby County Teacher of the Year, and to keep learning alongside incredible people through Leadership Germantown and the Education Commission, which I currently chair. Every one of those rooms taught me something I'm carrying into this new one.

What Comes Next for Village Virtual

Debi built something real here, and I don't take that lightly. My first order of business isn't to walk in with a five-point plan. It's to listen. Over the next couple of months, I'll be visiting partner schools across our region, sitting in on classes, and talking with the teachers, administrators, and families who use Village Virtual every day. I want to hear what's working, what's hard, and what we should be doing differently.

I'll be sharing what I learn along the way, here on the blog and out in the field. If your school works with Village Virtual and you'd like to be part of a visit this fall, we'd love to hear from you.

Thank you to Debi for building something worth continuing, and thank you in advance to everyone who opens a classroom door for me this fall.

Let's get to work.

— Heather