What you just can’t unsee…

Note: This article is based on the first comprehensive national perspective on learning pods published by the Center for Reinventing Public Education. We thank them for bringing a spotlight to this segment.

For decades, American families have relied on their neighborhood school. They pick where to live based on this school and organize just about every aspect of their lives around its schedule. However, even though this model hasn’t always served these families well, it has been all that most of them could afford or access.

Enter the pandemic. Faced with a major disruption to this institution, millions of parents came together to invent an entirely new way to learn. We now know this invention as ‘learning pods’ where 6–10 students of similar age come together under the supervision of an adult (usually an educator) to work on academics and other activities. The hope was that this would be a way to keep their kids learning during the pandemic, provide social interaction, and give parents a break.

More than 40% of these parents (representing 1M+ students) want to find a way to stick with their learning pods. When they had the opportunity to redefine what school meant for them, they chose to make it personalized, joyful, and deeply relationship-driven. For the sector as a whole, it’s a clarion call that parents want a departure from the antiquated education model of yesterday.

As we ease out of the pandemic, these parents have seen things they just can’t unsee. How we choose to respond will shape schooling for decades to come.

The Parent Perspective

Even before the pandemic, parents felt concerned about their children’s education, specifically the need for personalized academic support and the lack of positive socialization (i.e., significant rise in isolation and bullying). They also felt that the traditional school model did not work well for working parents. In fact, parents in so-called “free” public schools were already paying out-of-pocket for after-school support, tutors, or childcare.

When the pandemic started, it only heightened parents’ awareness of these concerns. Millions of these parents took matters into their own hands and formed learning pods with other families. And, 60% of the families who participated in a pod found it to be better than their child’s school experience before the pandemic. They felt known, valued, engaged, and happier overall.

For children, pods became a force for restoration. Rather than being told they were failing, pods became the place they were given the tools to help them recover. Pods also provided an intimate setting to develop social awareness and the ability to get along with others.

Eighty-five percent of families who felt that their instructor personalized their child’s experience thought the pod was better than pre-pandemic schooling. No other education innovation even comes close!

The Instructor Perspective

Millions of educators jumped at the opportunity to run their own learning pod, where they would have the flexibility, power, and time to support students the way they thought best. Academically, pod instructors can more nimbly respond to student needs. When they see a knowledge gap, they have the time and space to try multiple instructional strategies until one works. There are also very few places for knowledge gaps to hide. If a student is struggling, the pod instructor sees it as clear as day.

Pods also allow instructors to tap their own interests to support students in new ways. Pod instructors passionate about cooking can make math and science feel more applicable. Instructors who fancy themselves amateur historians make dry course content come to life with enactments or museum trips. In turn, students reflect that excitement with their own engagement, unlike any seen when students are told to sit in a classroom and listen to a lecture.

The Future of Pods

More than 40% of learning pod families want to continue post-pandemic. They want educators with greater teaching experience, fewer logistical hurdles to organizing pods, and more “normal” social experiences. To be clear, pods aren’t for everyone. However, for many millions of students, pods can be seen as joyful, personal, and flexible learning environments where students do their best work, make deep and meaningful friendships, and build the skills to be good citizens.

The biggest key to success for this movement is to move pods from being isolated islands to members of a national network that provides professional management support, instructor professional development, and access to other supports for parents and students.

Having a national network recruiting families across socio-economic demographics also helps avoid the homogeneity that a lot of self-organized pods face. As these networks scale, they will also become more affordable and accessible to more parents (e.g., KaiPod memberships average $150 a week, as opposed to $306 a week when parents self-organize).

A new learning model

In all consumer industries, it’s instructive to look at how consumers behave when they take control. Education is no different. When parents were given the opportunity, millions of them chose to build an education model that prioritized personalization, joy, and relationships.

At KaiPod Learning, we are proud to be building a model that’s designed for the needs of families, students, and educators. As we grow, we hope to influence more families that hybrid learning environments can be more personal, more flexible, and more joyful. Eventually, bricks-and-mortar schools will start to challenge their long-held assumptions about the role of a teacher, the role of their school buildings, and how to involve parents and students in their design.