Podcast: The New Classroom : NPR
COVID-19 has brought with it a number of challenges for teachers and parents alike. In this podcast Zuzanna interviews teachers, administrators, parents and students to find out what it has been like for them to adjust to the challenges and realistic fears during this pandemic. (This is USA based).
One of the innovations that parents came up with was the ideas of doing virtual learning pods. The parents hired an ‘instructor’ to be with their children during the day while they virtually connect to their public school teacher. This allows the parents to be able to continue to go to/concentrate on their jobs, whether they are working from home or their work place. The students still get to socialize but with a smaller group of other students while doing their virtual lessons. The students rotate between the houses of the families in the pod and still are required to wear their masks and practice good hand hygiene. The parents feel that this puts their children at a lower risk of getting ill from COVID. The parents know that there are no guarantees but at least this allows their children social interaction, continued education and a better chance of health safety.
This reminds me of the school ‘pod’ that my husband and I created with our three youngest children when they were in elementary school (about 1993). Our one son was having learning challenges in the classroom (later we discovered he had Asperger’s) and the teacher offered to allow me to teach him at home. She would send the assignments to me and he would join the class for physical education and art. Our son immediately improved in his marks, showed us skills we didn’t know he had and was much happier. During this time we ended up moving out of the community and instead of putting the other younger two children into a new school I decided to homeschool them for the last few months of the school year, along with our son that was already at home.
This went so well that the following year we decided to do it for ‘one more year’ with this happening for nine more years! When other parents saw the improvement in our son they asked if I would teach their children (I was being supervised by a qualified teacher through the homeschooling community). So we formed LOOC (Learning Out of Curiosity) school and over the nine years we took in 2-3 extra students each year. Everyone of them successfully integrated back into public school including our three children returning for high school. Each of our children have received post-secondary education and are doing well in their chosen careers.
Maybe the silver-lining of COVID for education will be the allowance of creative ideas such as pods becoming another alternative for parents, students and teachers.