Parents turn to tutors, ‘learning pods’
LOS ANGELES — The advertisements started popping up on social media almost immediately after Los Angeles Unified School District said campuses would remain closed for the start of the school year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We’re looking for a TA/College student to help with LAUSD’s virtual learning for the new school year. Parents are WFH. Kids are 5th, 3rd and potentially K. We’re starting a learning pod with another family. Any TA’s on the westside ... looking for work?”
“ISO: Teacher/Tutor for 2nd grader and a little Kinder if possible. Would be open to hosting a very small pod in our back yard.”
“I am looking for a TA or tutor to help facilitate remote learning with my twin 1st graders and my 5th grader. I am thinking 3-4 hours a day, 4-5 days a week ... Added perk, I am a really good baker.”
With most schools across California closed for the foreseeable future, families with financial resources are rushing to hire tutors and teachers to augment distance learning with children individually or in small groups in their spacious backyards or homes, creating an overnight coronavirus cottage industry: “learning pods.”
Such cohorts of families, neighbors or classmates are a consequence of parents who must fully get back to work and can no longer take on schooling and the pressure of supervising online learning alone. Instead, they are reimagining education on
their own terms to keep their children on track academically and socially.
Displeased with the quality of her son’s distance learning at Millikan Middle School in Sherman Oaks, Maryam Qudrat, a professor at Cal State Long Beach and co-founder of the group Concerned Parents L.A., said she is considering pooling resources with parents to get kids together and hire teachers.
Fabielle Covington, a stay-at-home mom in Castaic, is looking to hire a tutor for her son, who is entering the second grade. “The whole Zoom thing did not work for us,” she said.
But these accelerated moves could further exacerbate the equity gap among rich and poor students, some education researchers say. Underserved Latino and Black students, those without full digital access, English learners and those with disabilities will be left even farther behind.
In addition, low-income, Latino and Black families are disproportionately suffering from COVID-19 infection. Students in those communities are less likely to have a household environment conducive to learning pods, and some parents say they are fearful of letting outsiders into their homes.
But students learning in person with a teacher “are getting the social and emotional development of being together physically — and safely, hopefully — that in isolation children are not getting,” said UC Berkeley education professor Janelle Scott.
Education officials recommend against podding.
“In-person ‘pods’ do not align with current Public Health directives against gatherings with people who are not part of your household,” L.A. County Office of Education spokeswoman Margo Minecki said.