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The Daily Signal
‘Little Pod Platoons’ Are Education’s Answer to Lockdowns This Fall
Lindsey Burke
July 28, 2020
The rise of “pandemic pods” over the past two weeks in response to
public school shutdowns is a real-time, large-scale demonstration of
community responsiveness in a crisis.
Pandemic pods are the education version of “little platoons” first
mentioned by Edmund Burke. They prove that the “spirit of
association”—which Alexis de Tocqueville identified as a defining
characteristic of America—is alive and well.
Here’s how families are using pandemic pods to adapt in the wake of
national public school shutdowns. Families pull together groups of
students (typically four to 10 or so), find a space that can
accommodate the group (typically within one of the families’ homes),
and then hire a teacher to teach these co-quarantined students for
several hours, several days a week.
For some families, this will serve as their primary mode of schooling
this fall. For others, it will supplement what their child’s public or
private school is providing online during the year.
Families didn’t wait for government blessing to act. And while one
sympathizes with the many challenges school leaders must navigate at
the moment as they work to reopen their in-person classes, families
know their children cannot wait, and they are moving ahead to provide
education continuity.
A Facebook group called Pandemic Pods – Main provides loads of
information about pods, enabling members to share resources and network
with other families beginning their pod journey. There are threads on
logistical and legal guidance, networking, and COVID-19-related
information. Dialogue among families also provides useful, crowdsourced
information about how to participate in a pod if a child has special
needs.
That main page is subdivided into local chapters, enabling users to
find information about pods in their geographic area, and to network
with other local families and teachers. For example, as the page
suggests, networking requests—such as “We are two families with
kindergarten children in Monroe looking for a third family to join our
co-op pod; Please DM me!”—enable families to connect with each other.
One user queried members about how to interview potential teachers for
their pod, and received 70 comments with ideas ranging from inquiring
about how the prospective teacher handles classroom behavior issues and
hiring substitutes, to what subjects and grade levels the teacher is
certified to teach, and how the teacher plans to measure progress.
How a prospective teacher envisions the pod school day, what is his or
her philosophy of education, would the teacher do a trial run with the
pod, what is his or her level of comfort with technology, and dozens of
other questions are being asked and answered within the online pod
community.
As quickly as the pod community arose when it became clear public
school districts across the country would be largely doing emergency
online learning this fall, just as swift was the free-market response.
Tutors and teachers immediately rose to fill the demand, as did
companies dedicated to connecting families with them. For example:
SchoolHouse helps families set up their own microschool (small group
classes of five to eight students of mixed ages), working with families
to match them with a teacher in their area. They also help families
comply with any requisite state laws, and provide academic transcripts
for the students.
Prisma is a “co-learning network” that groups students into cohorts of
15-20 geographic peers for socialization, collaboration, online
learning, and independent work.
Primer provides educational resources, handles homeschool regulations,
and provides projects driven by individual student interests—from
filmmaking to physics—connecting students with content area experts and
enabling collaboration with other children across the country.
Prenda Microschools, which was already in a major growth phase prior to
the coronavirus pandemic, enables high-quality academics and
project-based learning in a small-group setting of five to 10 students.
The students are led by trained Prenda “guides.”
Impact Connections is a Maryland-based company that connects parents
with teachers in order to help them launch their own microschool.
The meteoric growth of pandemic pods are civil society in action. And
that civil society response is also addressing issues of access for
students from lower-income families, who may not have the resources to
contribute hundreds of dollars monthly to a pod to pay for a teacher.
Some pod groups are considering pooling additional resources to provide
a “scholarship” to a classmate whose parents may not be able to afford
the cost of a pandemic pod group. As Tocqueville said:
When you allow them to associate freely in everything, they end up
seeing in association the universal and, so to speak, unique means that
men can use to attain the various ends that they propose. Each new need
immediately awakens the idea of association. The art of association
then becomes, as I said above, the mother science; everyone studies it
and applies it.
Policymakers have a chance to adjust policy so it catches up with the
microschooling moment we’re in, and to make sure students from
low-income families aren’t left behind. Providing resources directly to
students through school-choice options like education savings accounts
will support students from low-income families in accessing these
promising alternatives to their assigned (and largely closed) district
schools.
And parents have a chance to reevaluate their child’s schooling options
right now. If district schools remain largely closed to in-person
learning this fall, this is likely just the beginning of the pod
movement, which has been likened to a 2020, high-tech version of the
one-room schoolhouse. With adjustments to policy, they could portend a
renaissance of the community provision and parent direction of
education.
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