The Academy for Virtual Teaching

Makers gotta make, Teachers gotta TEACH!

Who Are We?

The Academy for Virtual Teaching
is a vibrant and supportive community of

Professional • Proficient • Profitable


Quilt, Craft, and Art Teachers 

We are a community of professional online educators, sharing the joy of quilting, needle arts, crafting, and other hands-on creative arts with a worldwide audience through virtual workshops and lectures.

As entrepreneurs, businesspeople, and teachers, we generously support each other in this community as we further develop our technical expertise and hone our online teaching skills, becoming more proficient, profitable, and professional virtual teachers.

We Invite You to Join Us

Transform your passion into a profitable, sustainable, scalable business through virtual teaching.


Virtual Teaching Masterclass

Registration opens Feb 15, 2024

The Virtual Teaching Masterclass is a comprehensive guide to building virtual teaching into your business model. 

  • Offered live each year
  • 8-week intensive course for virtual teachers, designed to help you build a virtual teaching business
  • Extensive practical tutorials on every part of the business: platforms, equipment, video filming and editing, marketing, newsletters, contracts, administration, etc.
  • Multiple group coaching sessions with every lesson
  • Opportunity to use the AVT platform to build your first on-demand course

Virtual Teaching is ACHIEVABLE!

You already have most of the equipment you need! Start with what you already have and what you already do. You can build your skills and offer your course, then upgrade your tools as you build your skills.

Virtual Teaching is SCALEABLE!

Stop trading your time for money! Reach a limitless global audience. You are no longer limited by your geographic location when you can teach via technology.

Virtual Teaching is PROFITABLE!

Create passive income with evergreen, on-demand course content that can run on their own. Teach live virtual workshops without wasting time on travel and hauling your supplies around.



Virtual Teaching 101

Join Lyric Montgomery Kinard, a long-time expert on virtual teaching in this FREE 3-session mini workshop to help you understand the basics of what you need to get your virtual workshops up and running. Lyric will walk you through how to structure and translate your live workshops into virtual offerings in the most efficient and cost-effective manner.
Live Coaching Sessions: February 12-15th

Join the Academy and VT101 HERE


Calling all Content Creators!

NEW! April 2024

Does the thought of making videos for your brand immediately fill you with fear?

Are you a shop that needs to up their advertising game?

Are you a brand ambassador that needs to create better tutorials?

Are you a creator that wants to jump into creating fantastic video tutorials for social media, YouTube, or your website?

It's much easier than you think! Lyric will take the fear out of technology and help you find your camera confidence!

This NEW Workshop on creating high quality video content includes one week of very focused lessons and live coaching with Lyric Montgomery Kinard, who will get you started on your journey to creating better videos. The workshop includes precise equipment lists tailored to your budget and subject, as well as loads of practical tutorials for how to shoot and edit your content. 

You want to present your brand, your shop's products, and your creations in their best light and capture a broader audience- there is nothing better than video to get the attention of your audience.

The workshop includes a daily lesson and practical, step-by-step tutorials for each subject. Live Q&A sessions will be held via Zoom and recorded for future viewing.


Free Membership Plan

The Commons

  • Free to all hands-on creative arts virtual teachers 
  • General group discussions (a lot like Facebook without any of the weirdness)
  • Monthly open roundtable discussions held live via Zoom
  • Monthly guest seminars with experienced virtual teachers where members can "ask the pros anything"
  • Themed discussions where we engage in thoughtful conversations that lead to better virtual teaching practices
  • Member spotlight articles featuring an up-and-coming virtual teacher
  • Polls, quick questions

Library

  • Equipment reviews
  • Business resource recommendations

Professional Development Membership Plan

A paid membership with access to live monthly workshops, quarterly challenges, Zoom practice sessions, and live coaching sessions.

Invest in Your Business!
Join the

Professional Development Membership HERE

College of Continuing Education

  • Monthly live short courses designed to help you strengthen your business
  • Available via paid monthly membership or Á La Carte
  • Live Zoom practice sessions
  • Discounts for workshop listings at GlobalQuiltConnection.com and a4vt.com - let us help you find more students for your open enrollment classes
  • Task oriented live co-work sessions
  • Guest seminar archives
  • Quarterly challenges, 5 day "get it done" business task oriented events with live coaching
  • Full library of past event and workshop recordings

Study Hall

  • Accountability groups
  • Special interest groups by topic, such as the type of workshops members offer, or the specific on-demand course platform they use

Trademark for Makers Working Groups

Available to Professional Development academy members.

Work through this step-by-step guide with mentors as you get ready to protect your business and register your trademark.

We are privileged to have Tulane Law Professor Elizabeth Townsend Gard as a guide through this process.


Certification Program

  • Available to anyone who is teaching live Zoom courses: program is sponsored by the AVT but membership is not required
  • AVT Teacher Certification, providing accreditation and proof of proficiency
  • Designed to assure guilds that the virtual teacher they are hiring is proficient with live technology
  • Any teacher (member or not) can apply for certification
  • Adjudicator reviews website and audits your live class
  • Certification badge links back to web page that lists qualifications- use it anywhere
  • Guilds are eager for this, as they want to be confident that the teacher they are hiring can provide the highest quality of virtual programing
  • Click HERE for more information.

We Invite You to Join Us Now


Here at the Academy, we work together to create a cadre of skilled professionals who bring our love of crafting to the VIRTUAL world. We grow our skills, grow our audience, grow our love for our students, and grow our income through scalable online offerings.
If you are an in-person quilt, craft, or art teacher (or aspire to be one) and want to build a global audience through online workshops, we invite you to join us! All are welcome and all are supported here at the Academy. We help and lift each other as colleagues, no matter our experience level, as we continually learn about the ever-changing technology that lets us bring our offerings to our students in their own homes.
Taking your in-person workshops into the virtual world can help you grow your income without adding to your workload, and leave you more time for actually making the things you love!




If you aren't ready but want to stay in touch:
Sign up for our newsletter HERE


Campus Culture

Welcome to the Academy! We are all colleagues. As entrepreneurial business creators, we are both student and professor, mentoring and supporting each other on a continual journey toward proficiency, profitability, and professionalism.
  • All are welcome and all are supported here at the Academy. We respect each other at all levels as professional colleagues and continually discover and openly share our knowledge with each other.
  • Our community is open, honest, safe, and trustworthy. We build each other up rather than compete. We strongly believe that a rising tide lifts all ships and we support each other's biggest, wildest, most wonderful dreams.
  • We actively share our knowledge with each other and realize that our wide variety of experiences are all valuable. None of us are ever finished learning, and we often learn by asking questions. We freely share our knowledge and curiosity here at the Academy.
  • We love short polls and weekly questions. They only take a moment to answer but often spark some pretty interesting and thoughtful conversations that lead to better virtual teaching practices.
In other words, this is the BEST place for you as a virtual teacher to be!

The Academy is ever evolving.
Join us as we create this open, honest, safe, and trustworthy community.

We are an active community where teachers can safely learn from each other's experiences. We strongly believe that a rising tide lifts all ships and we support each other's biggest, boldest, most wonderful dreams.