There has been some press lately on academic pods – families pooling their resources to provide support or instruction during the pandemic. Some of these families are looking for someone to support students with the distance learning provided by their school district (and maybe supplement it in some areas), while others are looking for a credentialed teacher to basically teach their kids in a small, private school-like setting (this is also being referred to as microschooling)*. Services are springing up all over the country (and especially in the Bay Area) to help connect interested parents with prospective educators.
I have to say, I understand the popularity of academic pods. I actually proposed a pod-like scenario to my friends a couple of weeks before all the articles came out. I guess we were already kind of podding this summer, when I took the kids every day and provided supervision at a park, or activities in my backyard. If we’ve been getting them together in a safe way all summer, why not keep doing it during the school year?
The idea, originally, was to pool our financial resources to hire someone to help the kids complete their distance learning work, possibly supplementing the work in some way (we never got past the world “supplement” in our discussions so I can’t really articulate what that meant for us). Mostly we hoped this would allow us parents to get our own work done during the day, and to minimize the power struggles that erupt when we try to support our own tweens children during distance learning.
It turns out that even if we pool our resources, hiring someone would be really expensive. Everything in the Bay Area is really expensive, so I’m not surprised. It’s also really hard to find someone who is willing, and able, to do it.
Of course, “it costs too much” is an easy cop out, when really the whole enterprise is incredibly daunting to consider once one moves past the “Wouldn’t it be great to have someone around to make this easier!?” to the realities of “Who do we find? What are we actually going to ask them to do? Where will they do it? How will we determine all of these things when there are four of us and we have different ideas? How much is each person willing to pay? How much control over the situation does each person expect for their contribution? What kind of liability is involved in this scenario and who will shoulder that burden? Who will write up the contract and manage payments?” We are four friends who are very easy going, and have lower expectations than most, and even we realized pretty quickly that it’s actually incredibly complicated to put something like this together.
It’s even harder when you don’t have a group of families you know who want to create a pod with you. Podding with families to support my 1st grader would be way more helpful, but I don’t really have anyone to do that with. All his preschool friends are at a different school, and while I’ve reached out indicating that I’m interested in participating in some kind of pod, no one has gotten back to me. It’s clear that bringing in someone from another school, with different logistics, is not a snag anyone wants to introduce into an already complicated scenario. I’m also guessing I’m not willing (or possibly even able) to throw the kind of money at this that the other families can manage, so I haven’t really followed up.
At this point, we’re not sure what we’re going to do. I’m considering hosting something myself, in my backyard, and having my friends pay me to provide the supervision piece. I’m not sure if that is manageable yet, as I don’t really understand what will be required of me during actual school hours while we are distance learning. If it’s set up like the spring (and it might be for me, as an elective teacher), I could probably host the girls in my backyard and help them participate in their distance learning. But at this point I just don’t know.
Of course, when my district goes back to the classroom (and we will definitely do this before my kids’ district), any possibility of me doing this goes out the window.
We also might switch off days, with each mom taking off a morning to be with the girls in their own backyard. We each have backyards that are big enough, and the weather here should be nice until at least November. I could probably keep doing this even if we return to the classroom for a hybrid model because I would get one day at home to prep.
My son’s situation is also a wild card, and I think part of me hopes that if I were getting some supplemental income from my friends, maybe I could pay a high school student to help him at some point during the day (our neighbor would be ideal for this because he is amazing and speaks Spanish and would be generally awesome to have around). There is also one family nearby (my son’s best friend) that I’m hoping to engage in some way – I would be willing to provide some kind of supplemental services to them for free if it meant my son got to hang out with his friend on a regular basis, because really all my son needs is some socialization.
I definitely want to do some supplemental work with my daughter and her friends. I’ve already brought home a few novel sets so we can do reader’s workshop and my mom has agreed to do some writing units with them (my friends would pay her of course). Obviously, being a teacher makes all of this WAY EASIER for me than it would be for other people (the supplemental part is especially hard because knowledge of the standards AND resources are necessary).** The good news is I can do the supplemental part no matter what – it could happen in the afternoons a couple of times a week, and I know my friends are very interested in this piece so it will probably happen.
Right now there are a lot of unknowns. I’ve told my friends that I am interested in providing something, but that I can’t commit to anything until I know more about my own schedule. I also have to talk to my husband, who generally prefers the simpler option over all others. The fact that being with her friends will make distance learning a happier and more fulfilling experience for our daughter is the only reason he would even consider all this complication. (Whereas I am also eager to help out my friends – two of them are single moms and this has been really hard on them.)
There is still a lot to figure out, and even if we did try something, I would only commit to the six weeks that I know my district will be in distance learning. I think switching off is probably the ideal scenario, but it might not work for everyone. And if I did offer the service, I would be very explicit about what would, and would not, be providing. It will be a lot of extra work, but if it means my daughter (and her friends, who I enjoy and care about very much) have a more positive experience, and I make some supplemental income, it might be worth the late nights I would be guaranteeing for myself.
All that to say, I’m thinking about podding, but only in ways that are relatively easy for me, and that are possible only because I am a teacher and I have friends who are interested in the same set up as I am. I don’t think I could handle the expense or complication of pooling resources to hire someone else, especially not with people I don’t know well. Mostly I want my kids to have some time with their peers, and maybe a little supplementation (more for my 5th grader than my 1st grader). And that is where I’m at. (And yes, I know that when upper-middle class families like my own do this we exacerbate the widening achievement gap – I will definitely be reaching out to both my kids’ teachers to see if they have any ideas for how we can support the students in their classes that need it).
*Neither of these options – not pods nor microschools – should be called homeschooling – which is a word being used to describe all kinds of situations that are not homeschooling at all. Parents helping their children complete work provided by their school are not homeschooling. Parents paying a teacher to provide a complete educational experience are not homeschooling. Homeschooling existed before the pandemic and will exist after the pandemic and the word, evidently, will be used erroneously during the pandemic.
**I’ve seen a lot of talk about hiring substitute teachers to run pods or microschools and to provide supplemental learning experiences, but I do not believe someone who is cleared as a substitute is necessarily capable of this. In California you only need to pass a finger print screening and a 10th-grade equivalency test to become a substitute – you don’t need to know ANYTHING about what should be taught at each grade level, or how best to teach it. That said, some people are substituting as they earn their teaching credential and have completed some of their coursework. And obviously substitutes that are retired teachers are very qualified. I would urge families to be careful and not to assume that substitute = teacher, because that is not necessarily the case.
What are your thoughts on academic podding? Have you considered it?
