Donna Johnson teaches troubled, abused, and mentally disturbed teenage girls at Hope Hill Children's Home Alternative School. She also teaches students who earn credits toward a diploma through Providence High School, an online entity Johnson created from scratch last January. It seems like a mighty odd move for a 58-year old grandmother with no prior online-learning experience, especially given the apparent differences between her day job and the virtual school she hopes to make her part-time career after she retires from the classroom. Johnson's only contact with her online students, some of whom live abroad, is a cool-blue screen full of two-dimensional pixels. According to Betty Elliott, a now-retired principal who hired Johnson to teach at a public Kentucky alternative school in the late 1990s, a school like Providence High, which can be accessed by anyone, anywhere, "seems like it may be the trend of the future." If that's the case, Johnson appears to be leading the pack. The majority of online schools are extensions of bricks-and-mortar institutions, both public and private. While there are not any statistics on teachers who start up their own online schools, let alone those specializing in dropout prevention, the practice certainly is not common, according to the National Association of Independent Schools. Neither is it necessarily a good idea, online-education experts warn. Troubled kids in particular, they argue, need the structure and support of in-person interaction. But Johnson, once considered an unpromising student herself, sees online schooling as "a natural progression" from her hands-on teaching.