3/13/2021 Learning Pods are Ruining our School Community | by Ariel Frager | Medium
When my son’s learning pod fell apart in September, leaving my only child alone again Get started Open in app as he was throughout the first agonizing months of the pandemic, all I could think about
was the concept of “what do we owe each other.” I felt abandoned by the school community we chose for our child and really felt like what we owe each other is something significant when the world turned upside down. What Do We Owe Each Other also is the title of a book by philosopher T.M. Scanlon that illustrates his ideas on contractualism and the importance of a caring community. In our school community, I foolishly believed there a moral responsibility that we are all entitled to the same things. Before COVID, I thought my son’s school was perfect. The progressive and academically forward-thinking curriculum provides a depth of learning that keeps my kid engaged and excited about school. As parents, his dad and I have loved being welcomed into a community of like-minded families who want the very best for their children. Community is the heart and soul of the school and we loved it. The school sings the song of inclusion and community but when the world fell apart, so did the social structure that in the before times kept the privilege of some mostly hidden. Perhaps the answer to what we owe each other is a type of social egalitarianism that gives each and every person the same self-respect that comes with seeing themselves as equal. If that is the answer, I know that our school community has failed. Our only hope to escape this pandemic emotionally and spiritually intact is to be able to rely on each other. This is not like the ads we saw appearing on our streaming devices in April when we were all binge watching to keep from doom scrolling. The ads for every type of product imaginable all said something to the effect “we are all in this together.” The truth is, we are not in this together. The privileged are relatively unscathed and this plays out in our education systems as much as everywhere else. Sending our child to a private school has long been a point of embarrassment, bordering on shame because both my partner and I are public school educators. We believe in the right for everyone in society to be educated. We love the schools where we work and have dedicated our lives to educating other people’s children. And we made a different choice for our child. Until COVID, the choice had been so very positive. What we couldn’t see before the pandemic belched the truth to the surface is how the privileged in the community would use their resources to only benefit themselves.
The actions of the private school community are in stark contrast to the love and care we Get started Open in app have experienced in our public-school communities. At my husband’s Title 1 high
poverty high school, when staff members have suffered losses and health crises during the pandemic, meal trains have been created and Go Fund Me pages fully supported. At the elementary school where I work, the parents organized a pod system that included all families, regardless of their ability to pay. The wonderful caring and inclusion we see in our work school communities during COVID couldn’t be further from the selfishness we are seeing at the private school where our son attends. During the COVID spring of 2020, the school was in a tailspin just like the rest of the world. We all learned Zoom and didn’t leave our houses and our kids all missed each other. Slowly as the warmth of summer parted the Northwest rain, the community started gathering again in small groups. Dinner alfresco with one family, a camping trip with another as we braved reconnecting. Then came the anxiety of starting the new school year. The talk of the pods started. After an entire summer of discussion, we were eventually invited to join an already established pod but the terms of our involvement were not clear. We were equals in the requirements — payment to the teacher which was a huge stretch for us, responsibility of driving but we had no voice in the decision making. We were invited, we painfully learned, as long as we were silent. Our state caught on fire right when school and the pod were supposed to start. The other pod families decided it would be wise to drive 2000 miles to a lake house in Minnesota to escape the smoke. Our family demurred and when we expressed concern about the impact on our son of moving the pod to another state and taking the teacher too, we were ostracized. Then we quit. Our situation of not being fully included was not unique in the community. Other families were excluded from the pods completely, isolated and alone. Our family utilized our education and our middle-class privilege when we chose to send our son to a private school under the Pollyannish belief this school that emphasized community would be different. Of course, the school like all of society, functions within the hierarchal power of what money can buy. I used to joke that our family was the socio-economic diversity at the school. That punchline doesn’t seem so funny anymore.
As a community are we not all entitled to the same respect, consideration, support and Get started Open in app caring? As Scanlon writes, what we owe each other relates to “the positive value of a
way of living with others.” It has been clear that the learning pods are not set up as a positive way to live with others. The learning pods are designed for exclusion and have a high school mean girl cliquish quality. The pods are a way for those with access, connections and wealth to make the pandemic a little less horrible. If you can afford it, if you get a precious invitation, the pod might work for some but not for the community as a whole. This is how the good will generated by a school community is ruined. When one of us is left behind, we are all diminished. A moral community implies that all people have equal respect, there is no room for domination, repression, and exclusion. I’m not sure how our school community recovers after COVID but I do know that the pods have generated a host of hard feelings that will take thoughtful caring to heal. Learning pods by their very nature are opposite of what we owe each other.