All their lives, they were told they couldn’t do it – couldn’t make the track team, couldn’t be the smart one raising his hand in class. Couldn’t be like all the other kids.

That is, until Leslie Fetzer came along.

In classrooms across the state, Fetzer, a biology teacher with the N.C. Virtual Public School, has appeared via live stream or in pre-recorded lectures from her home in Holly Springs, walking disabled students through complex biology lessons on the steps of mitosis and the distinctions between plant and animal cells.

“My heart is in working with those students, those who have learning challenges,” Fetzer said. “I don’t like the word disabled. They were born with challenges, and we’re going to meet their needs.”

But meeting those needs has meant more than being the “fairies” or “cobbler elf,” as Fetzer puts it. It has meant working late into the night to craft lesson plans suited specifically to a student’s interests and challenges. It’s meant answering phone calls, texts and instant messages at all hours of the day, all in the interest of getting to know the student – and getting the student to know the material.

Earlier this month, the nation took notice, when the Southern Regional Education Board and the International Association for K-12 Online Learning named her the National Online Teacher of the Year for K-12 at a symposium in Atlanta March 1-2.

The honor caught few by surprise in a state that named Fetzer the 2011 Teacher of the Year at the Virtual Public School and that has reaped the benefits of Fetzer’s personal touch. Many of her fellow educators have credited her for dispelling misperceptions of online education as impersonal and out-of-touch with the student.

“When I first started teaching, it was never my intention to just teach online,” said Fetzer, who left a lucrative medical writing job nearly a decade ago to teach, first in New York and then at Holly Springs High School in 2007. “I quickly learned that I could reach students more. The myth is that you don’t get to know your students online. You actually get to know them more.”

Fetzer’s personal touch comes in the form of sign language, cartoons or word associations – anything that matches students’ interests to the subject matter. At one high school, she was able to teach a student about evolution through his interest in running. She then convinced him to try out for the track team.

“He messaged her that he wanted to try out for track, but said, ‘Kids like me don’t make the track team.’ She said ‘No, no, you’re good at this. You can do it,’ ” related Michelle Lourcey, the curriculum and instruction division director for the Credit Recovery, OCS Blended Learning and English programs at the virtual school

That student made the team.

Fetzer remembers the class that caught Nature Made, a leading producer of vitamins and supplements, in a lie. Many of her students noticed a vitamin commercial mentioning the “cell wall,” but they knew that “animals don’t have cell walls, only plants,” she said.

With the help of an English teacher, the class wrote a letter to Nature Made, explaining the commercial’s fault. In response, students received a letter explaining they were indeed correct, along with coupons and key chains.

“So how awesome was it that this group of kids who were always told you can’t do it was told they were too smart?” Fetzer said.

“The commercial didn’t run long after that.”