The rise of online learning is rapidly transforming how and what teachers teach, and even who—or what—teachers are. In the midst of these changes, the characteristics that have historically defined a high-quality education are easily lost. Not only content knowledge, but also ways of thinking and habits of mind are the hallmarks of the well-educated individual, and these latter qualities are not so easily acquired online. Or are they?

This volume shows how a group of online-learning believers built the best high school in the world without laying a single brick: the Stanford Online High School (SOHS). By chronicling SOHS’s distinctive approach to curriculum, gifted education, and school community over SOHS’s first seven years, Bricks and Mortar makes the case that the dynamic use of technology and the best traditional methodologies in education are not, in fact, mutually exclusive. Indeed, while SOHS has redefined what is possible online, a great education is ultimately the product of an interactive community of teachers and students.

In this companion volume to Bricks and Mortar, Jeffrey Scarborough and Raymond Ravaglia present a series of essays written by senior instructors and division heads at the Stanford Online High School (SOHS). Written from the perspective of the online-learning practitioner, these essays discuss in detail the challenges of teaching particular disciplines, accomplishing particular pedagogical objectives, and fostering the habits of mind characteristic of students who have received deep education in a given discipline. Perspectives from the Disciplines also examines counseling, student services, and student life viewpoints as it discusses how a truly international community has been fostered at SOHS, and how SOHS’s student relationships are in many ways deeper and more intimate than those found in traditional secondary schools.