Starting a Learning Pod is easier than you think!

Here are 5 easy steps to get started plus a guide with in-depth information. We’ve helped hundreds of families and teacher start them and happy to talk to any family or teacher considering this route. Just reach out and say hi!

More information: 

With social distancing policies in place, many families have been longing for a way for their children to connect socially - or desperately looking for viable childcare options while schools and daycares are closed.

Hiring a full-time nanny or teacher to engage with children while families are working is simply not a feasible option for many families. Even with some schools scheduled to re-open in the fall, families may feel uncomfortable with their children gathering in large groups, putting them or more vulnerable family members at risk of infection.  

All of these reasons and more have led many families to consider starting learning pods, microschools, homeschool co-ops or childcare swaps. 

For the last 5 years, I’ve helped hundreds of parents and teachers start or join microschools. The families who joined these schools came for a variety of reasons. For older children, they were looking for more personalized learning, but couldn’t afford private school. For younger children, many families didn’t have free or affordable preschool options available and were looking for ways to save money. Some were looking for learning environments that better accommodated special needs, had more diversity or were catered to special interests such as bilingual education.  Others felt that their children would develop better friendships in a smaller group setting.

What these families found was wonderful play-based learning opportunities, education tailored to their children’s strengths and interests, teachers their children loved and most importantly, an incredible community of families - and friends for life. 

A word about health and safety

If you’re thinking about starting a learning pod during the pandemic, it’s important that you’re fully informed and prepared for the risks this might involve. Research suggests that joining a small microschool is safer than returning to school, but there are still risks to consider.

These are the most important things to know and keep in mind:

Children catch Covid-19

When considering starting a learning pod during a global pandemic, it’s important to be serious about health and safety concerns. While children don’t often exhibit symptoms of Covid-19, they are just as likely to catch COVID-19 as adults and can definitely pass it on. If one family in your learning pod catches COVID-19, the rest of the members will very likely be infected. 

Wear masks

Masks can greatly reduce the threat of COVID-19. Whether or not your children return to school or join a learning pod, wear masks. Masks will greatly reduce the chance of catching this disease. Learn more about how masks can help reduce the threat of COVID-19 and what happened when schools re-opened in Israel and Melbourne here.

Consider doing your learning pod online

Many parents have a negative view of online learning and socialization because our educational institutions and providers that were doing learning in-person have had difficulty adjusting to this new medium. Online experiences have been painful and unpleasant. That said, it doesn’t have to be that way. There are plenty of wonderful ways kids are socializing online. And you can certainly build meaningful social connections in an online learning pod.  Learn more about helping kids develop social skills online here.

The checklist: Here is what you’ll need to do to start your learning pod

1. Decide what you want

2. Choose a curriculum (or make it play-based)

3. Find a teacher (or swap)

4. Find another family (or families) to join

Step 1. Get clear on what you want

Curriculum, schedule, ages, philosophy

You’ll be able to start your learning pod a lot more quickly and manage expectations better if you figure out what you want before you start looking for another family. It can definitely be fun to collaborate with other families and a teacher in developing your learning pod. However, if you try to be all things to all people, it might end up falling apart. It won’t be difficult to find another family. I recommend choosing your curriculum, schedule, ages and teacher (unless you plan on being a teacher) and then presenting your plan to your community to see who wants to sign on.

Choose curriculum: There are so many wonderful curricula for secular homeschool families. And you absolutely don’t have to be a teacher to use them. Any of them can easily be led by a parent or caregiver in a small group with little to no prep time.  If you decide to get an experienced teacher to lead your group or it’s more focused on social/childcare than learning you don’t necessarily need a curriculum. Here are a few of my favorites. I strongly encourage you to choose a curriculum that works for your child and then invite other families to join in. 

Here are a few of my favorites and a review I’ve written on each of them (note that these are equally great if you decide to focus on 1-1 instruction with your children). They require very little prep and minimal parent involvement.

• Khan App Kids

• Khan Academy

• Critical Thinking Co

• Blossom and Root

• Moving Beyond the Page

• Oak Meadow

• Time4Learning

• Torchlight

• Language:  Decide if you want the pod to be conducted in another language besides English. Language immersion is always a great way for children to learn and pods are a great way to help children develop their maternal language skills or learn a new one.

• Number of families: Choose how many families you want to join. While we’re in this pandemic, I strongly recommend only one another family who is also practicing rigorous social distancing. Generally pods tend to have anywhere between 5-10 kids. Pods with children under 5 should not have more than 1 teacher for 4 children. Pods with children 6 and up generally do well with 5-10 kids and one teacher or a teacher and assistant.

• Ages: decide what ages you feel comfortable letting into your group. Ages can absolutely be mixed and differentiated learning is wonderful for learning. If you have siblings of very different ages, you may want to create a wider range. Generally good age groups to combine together are 1) 5 and under 2) 6-9 3) 9-12 4) 13 and up. Pods can becoming challenging for older kids who need a bigger and more diverse group - and you really might want to consider an online option for this age group. 

• Schedule: If the goal of your program is to provide learning and social interaction for your children, and childcare isn’t that important to you, generally 2-3 days a week or 2-3 mornings or afternoons a week (for younger kids)  is more than enough to accomplish this.

• If you want to swap: Decide how the arrangement will work. Do you want to swap days or half days? How many families do you want to get involved? Will you rotate homes (I recommend having one central location if you can rather than swapping houses) What kind of parenting style do you feel comfortable with?

• Values:  Write a list of all the things that are important to you. Do families need to be on time? Do you want other families to participate in some way. How do you feel about parents coming late or leaving early? What’s your approach to parenting?  What are your views on diversity and inclusion? Is your pod secular or religious? What rules do you expect other families to follow in your house?  Make sure you’re very clear on your values so you’re sure that you’re aligned with the other family joining. 

• Budget: Your costs will include teacher, curriculum, background check and “school supplies.” The main cost is hiring a teacher or babysitter to lead the group. However, if you’re swapping with other families, which is a great option, then that cost is free! Think about what you can afford to pay a leader. I recommend paying at least $40/hr to a trained teacher.  If you decide to have your caregiver lead your group, I recommend starting at $25/hr for 2 children, $30 for 3 and an additional $5 for each child who joins. School supplies generally won’t cost more than $200/year. It costs about $50 to run a background check on the leader of your group. Curriculum can range from $20 to $500 for the whole group for the whole year. There is plenty of free and discounted curriculum in homeschool groups. 

• Pick a location: Decide if you want this to take place outside, at your house, at a teacher’s home or alternate homes. For health reasons, for consistency and also for setting up an environment conducive to learning, I recommend not swapping homes, but many have done it with success. 
  

• Make sure you are following childcare and schooling laws in your state: Generally two children can be considered a license-exempt childcare. However, if you are over age 6, you will generally have to file as a homeschooler or be enrolled in some type of school. Remember that you have a constitutional right to educate your child as you see fit, but there may be specific guidelines in some states regarding how many children can gather with a paid caregiver or teacher. Primer has a state-by-state homeschool regulations navigator that you can use. If your child is under 5, check Noodle’s state by state guide for preschool laws. You can also contact your department of education or child care services for more information. We are also happy to help you find the right information for your state, as these laws can sometimes be confusing and even contradictory!

• Write a one paragraph post: Come up with one paragraph you can post to social media that includes a little bit about your family, your vision for the program, schedule, ages and your general location that you can use to post to parent groups looking for a teacher, caregiver or other families. 

Step 2. Find a teacher  

Once you’ve figured out what you want and how much you’re willing to pay, you can start looking for a teacher. If you already have a nanny or caregiver or family watching your child, they can absolutely be the leader of the group. I’ve found the best place to find teachers and caregivers is local facebook parenting groups.  Other place to find teachers include babysitting sites like care.com or urban sitter and tutoring sites like Wyzant. You can also do searches for teachers on LinkedIn. If your town has a teacher’s college or Montessori/Waldorf or other teacher training centers, you can also contact them. If your child has a summer camp they love, it’s possible one of the teachers might be willing to lead your group. You can generally contact your child’s summer camp teacher through connecting with them on LinkedIn if you don’t have their email. Or you can contact the camp to get in touch with them. To vet a teacher, I recommend having a phone conversation with them and then invite them to do a sample lesson for your kids online. What’s most important is the connection and chemistry between your teacher and the kids. That’s more important that their teacher expertise. 

Step 3. Find other families

Once you’ve established your vision and found a teacher, it’s time to find other families to join. This is the easy part as there are always so many parents looking for personalized, affordable learning environments for their kids. If you post to your local facebook parenting group saying you are looking for other families to join your pod with the paragraph post you wrote (being very clear about cost, vision and the rest) you will likely get many, many responses). Stick to your vision as much as you can because if someone interested in joining requests a lot of changes, they will likely be asking you to accommodate for a long long time. 

Step 4. Process payments

Once you’ve got going you’ll need to find a way to process payments. The other family can pay you in cash, but it’s also easy to set up recurring payments or invoices on squarespace, paypal or ecommerce platforms. 

Enjoy the adventure!

Building a learning pod can be an incredibly rewarding experience for all involved, a good way to make friends and learn.  And not at all difficult to set up. If you have any questions as you are setting up your learning pod, please feel free to reach out to us. We’re always happy to support you as you look for new and innovative ways to support your children learning, making friends and growing into happy healthy, engaged citizens, loving what they do, caring for others and bringing about positive change in their communities and their world. 

If you’d like an additional help connecting with families or leaders/teachers starting learning pods, feel free to fill out our learning pod survey and we will do our best to connect you with families or teachers near you or online.