By Abby Goodnough, The New York Times, August 15, 2020
When Shy Rodriguez heard about one of the hottest trends in education during the pandemic — “learning pods,” where parents hire teachers for small-group, in-home instruction — she knew immediately it was something she could never afford for her sons.
Like many parents, Ms. Rodriguez, a single mother and nursing assistant in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., was deeply dissatisfied with the online instruction her school district provided last spring. Facing more of the same this fall — her district is offering an in-person option for now, but she isn’t comfortable sending her boys — she set out to create a more basic, and affordable, type of pod: one where parents take turns with child-care duties so they can go to work most days while their children attend online school together at home.
“I feel like it can be extremely discouraging,” Ms. Rodriguez, 33, said of the widening educational gulf between wealthier children and her sons, 8 and 11. People who live paycheck-to-paycheck, she said, feel “like we’re directly failing our children because we can’t offer or afford the same level of opportunities.”
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