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Be time up your pandemic pod1/4/2023 More than half of the instructors in our sample were not working as certified classroom teachers in February 2020. Pods attracted broad and often untapped pools of individuals who were interested in supporting student learning. Center on Reinventing Public Education Pods broadened the pool of educators and provided more flexible teaching environments One of the key benefits teachers and parents discovered in pods - the flexibility to tailor learning to students’ needs and interests - was undermined when students spent long hours tethered to online schools. Families whose pods had no connection to schools’ remote learning were more than twice as likely as other families to report greater satisfaction with their pods. We asked families whether they were more satisfied with their pods than their prior school experience. However, nearly half of families we surveyed said their pod instructors also created and delivered their own lessons from scratch, and 20 percent operated fully independently of schools’ remote learning programs.įor these pods, independence turned out to be a strength. In the majority of pods in our study, students remained enrolled in their public schools and connected to certified teachers through district-provided remote learning. In the pod, there’s no sneaking by without getting your work done like there would be in school. One parent, who also served as her pod’s instructor, contrasted the personal attention each student received with the “anonymity” of her child’s former school: “There’s no getting lost in this. Nearly half of families felt their child was more deeply connected to instructors and peers in the pod and received more individualized instruction that met their needs compared with their pre-pandemic schools. Over two-thirds of families that responded to our survey cited tangible benefits for their child, such as being more engaged in learning, completing more challenging assignments or feeling happier overall compared with their previous school experiences. Pods made space for stronger relationships and instruction tailored to each student’s needs Schools, district leaders and state policymakers working to recover from COVID-19 can draw useful lessons from those pods and the factors that caused many of them to quickly vanish. Yet, families who participated in these pandemic learning communities saw possibilities they can’t unsee. Once schools reopened for in-person learning, most pods receded. As our latest report shows, most families sought safe spaces for learning and socialization for children displaced by school closures - and more than half of families and three-quarters of instructors we surveyed created learning environments they preferred over school. Since fall 2020, researchers at the Center on Reinventing Public Education have studied hundreds of self-organized learning pods that launched during the pandemic. Related: Learning Pod Teachers Say They Don’t Want to Return to Traditional Classrooms She still feels the pod provided a better educational setting and would love to do it again, but with schools back open and a new job that requires her to work onsite, she said it felt “complicated” and a “big undertaking” to try to remake the experience. Today, however, like many students who discovered unexpected joys during pandemic learning, Daniels’s kids are back at school along with their podmates. She and some other parents wanted it to continue and even explored homeschooling options. In Daniels’s words, the result was a “momentous occasion in childhood” for her kids and the “shining light, the silver lining” of the pandemic. All of them worked from home during the pandemic and took their children’s learning into their own hands like never before. The construction project was the combined brainchild of their parents - among them an architect, a carpenter and Daniels, a former neonatal intensive care nurse with a passion for woodworking. After spending the morning completing school assignments remotely with help from a hired instructor, they would join a handful of other kids in their California suburb to apply their learning outside, in the ultimate hands-on task. Donate here to support The 74's independent journalism.Īt the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Holly Daniels’ third grade son and second-grade daughter could be found in the backyard building a treehouse. Sign up here for The 74’s daily newsletter.
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