August 5, 2020

Parents all over the U.S. are bracing themselves for a tough school year ahead, thanks to the country's steadily climbing COVID-19 numbers. Since the prospect of in-person learning seems risky amid rising virus casualties, employed parents are desperate to find a way to juggle at-home work, childcare, and homeschooling they may not be prepared for or even fully capable of delivering. The solution? According to USA Today, it's something called a homeschool pod.

Also known as a pandemic pod, education pod, or microschool, a homeschool pod is a small cluster of parents banding together to privately fund an education alternative for their children. On the surface, it seems like a suitable bandage to a currently fractured public school system—it gives parents a semblance of safety without taking away their child’s opportunity to have a good time while learning.

Especially considering schools in metro Atlanta have had to quarantine hundreds of students and teachers shortly after reopening—along with more than 2,000 students and nearly 600 teachers in Mississippi. Even into October, a number of New York City schools had to be closed after parts of the city had turned into coronavirus hotspots, while the school district in Billings, Montana has come up with an interesting idea to keep kids in school and away from the possibility of quarantining. Some people in Texas, though, won't get the chance to homeschool their kids as multiple school districts have made in-person learning mandatory.

Read the whole article here:
https://coronavirus.nautil.us/homeschool-pod-coronavirus-pandemic/

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