Learning Pods: Mobilizing Changemakers
As a social entrepreneur, I think about the double bottom line. How can I create value and benefit the world? Since the pandemic started, I‘ve been energized to serve our Hudson Lab School students, families and staff, as well as our broader local community. To offer a sense of normalcy for our students, our teachers began daily synchronous distance learning lessons after a quick 3-day weekend transition. The following week we began offering online after-school classes for our students to help support working parents and our after-school teachers. In addition, we offered support groups and tutorials for HLS parents. We then began offering online after-school classes to our broader community, bringing fun, engagement and connection to more children. And this summer, we offered Summer Pods to give kids a safe reintroduction to society with a little bit of structure and a lot of play.
During this time when many are overcome with emotional duress, loneliness, financial hardship and fear of uncertainty, human connection has soothed our anxiety and eased the grip of stress on our minds to allow small doses of creativity and optimism to influence our abilities to find solutions.
As we look to the fall and the seemingly insurmountable challenges facing schools, I believe we can collectively work together towards solving both the looming education crisis as well as the deeper inequities exposed by the pandemic. If we all start thinking about how we can help ourselves and our neighbors, we can provide a good education for children in all communities and employ teachers more safely.
While there are always many paths towards solving any problem, our solution is Learning Pods. We will provide a teacher, curriculum and administration for a limited group of students to meet at a family’s home for a consistent, high quality, in-person education. We have thought through the logistics to limit wide exposure for each Pod stakeholder and we have empowered parents and teachers to address their concerns and priorities with the people in their Pods.
Our mission is to provide Learning Pods for as many children as possible. As a first step towards making this happen, we have started a scholarship fund. To make this possible at scale, we will need to partner with parents and schools and foundations and corporations. Everyone will need to think and act as a changemaker; and if we collaborate, if we are creative, and if we put community first, we just might succeed at educating our children and protecting their emotional health this school year.