Behind The Launch Of Learning Pods

Welcome to the future of education. Really excited to have this conversation today at a really important time for a lot of families and schools and educators around the country as they try to figure out what to do for the fall. Joining me are Orlie and Baber, some of the co founders of learning pods. And they'll talk more about that in a moment. But first, both of you, welcome.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, I appreciate you being on. Why don't we just start with you both just talking about your own backgrounds and the schools that you are creating and running outside of learning pods and then we can talk about this moment first. But just to give the audience sort of a sense of what you were doing before this all hit, Orly, why don't you go first?

Sure. I am actually in the process of launching a brand new school here in San Francisco. The school's called Redbridge and We are a K8 school, but we're opening with K through 2 this September. Fingers crossed it'll be in person, but that is still up in the air. And the focus of Redbridge is to design a school where all the structures and systems reinforce and reward student agency. So we're teaching students how to take ownership of their learning, set goals for themselves, reflect and learn how to be the drivers of their own education.

Perfect. And Barbara, tell us about the school that you guys have been running for a little bit now.

Sure, yeah. Compared to ordinary school, we are old. We are old timers. We're four years old now. We're a micro school as well, based out of Tribeca in New York City. We are going to be eventually K12, although we came seven right now. And the big sort of theme of our school is that it's not just important to acquire knowledge, but it's all about how you apply your knowledge and apply your skills. So we're heavily sort of into project based learning and applied learning. So that's, that's our theme of the school.

Terrific, terrific. So take us behind the scenes, Orly. I should tell everyone that's watching. Orly and I have known each other for a long time now, and so I've watched, you know, you run through this. But like, how did COVID 19 hit? And then at some point, I think Orly, you reached out and let me know that you were doing this. And that's how I found out about learning pods, I think. But how did this all come together? How did. You guys aren't the only schools behind bringing this dream together. Just take us behind the scenes of how you set up Learning pods and then we'll talk about what it is.

Yeah, I can answer that. I think it's the three founding schools. So there is Hudson Lab School which is up in Westchester, New York. There is Redbridge in San Francisco and then Portfolio School in New York City. And we also, we know each other really well, the founders and we're part of this cooperative called the Innovative School Cooperative through which we, you know, really talk about thoughtful innovation in education. We thought about sort of like quality education for all and things like that. And you know, as the pandemic hit, you know, Kate and Stacy are the founders of Hudson Lab School. Orly, myself and my co founder Doug, we're sort of like talking about, you know, what are the, you know, what's the situation that we are in. We've just come out of like three months of remote learning. It certainly has its enormous challenges, especially in the younger age group. And what can we do as we move forward, you know, and fortunately for all three schools, we are micro schools. So we knew that, you know, given the right circumstances in the city or the area we are in, we are going to be able to open. But for a lot of sort of mid sized to large schools and they happen to be mainly public schools, but private schools as well, it's going to be a challenge. I mean things are going to look, you know, very different. What kind of sort of environment there is in school, what days you're on, what days you're off, how much you're doing just distance, pure distance learning and that, you know, it causes anxiety, it causes stress at all different levels for kids, for parents, for teachers, educators in general, administrators. So we started thinking about, okay, what is the solution here? And we felt, we sort of like talked about a lot of different ideas and this started to sort of gel a lot more. And then up in Westchester, where Hudson Lab School is, we put summer pods together as well. So from there we started to learn like what this would really look like. Now summer camp, like pods are different than academic year pods. But that sort of was the motivation as we, as we got into summer and you know, for two months now it's just been, you know, working really hard to actually get this off the ground and getting it started.

This number got you, you guys were ahead of this. It seems in many, in many cases of the pods, both the terminology, but also sort of the trend that you saw that was going to start to impact so many parents and so forth across. And the fact that you were prototyping in the summer, I think A is brilliant because it gave you a chance to get your feet wet with it. But I'm curious, when did you realize that sort of the magnitude of the need was going to be orally, like in your sense of, wow, we really need to do something to be able to create a solution for folks.

Yeah. Well, first of all, the summer camp pods ended up being, I think, more popular than anyone had anticipated. And then we just put together an information session and saw who signed up for it for the academic year pods and got so much interest. And we've continued to run information sessions each week. And I mean, you know, we all have micro schools, so we're used to like, like if 20 people sign up and like 15 people show up, that's a good day for an information session. And you know, this was just a whole nother scale.

So meaning, like when you say whole nother scale, are you talking like hundreds here or thousand or like what sort of dimension?

Each time.

Wow.

Each time, wow, that's incredible. So talk to me now because a lot of parents out there, they're trying to figure this out right now. We're seeing Facebook groups pop up, we're seeing places like, you know, Wonder School. I had Chris Bennett on like helping people identify. There's all sorts of solutions people are grasping for. What is learning pods provide and what's the proposition behind it that you are all are offering that you see as distinct in the market, perhaps?

Yeah. So there are a few things. First of all, we help families find one another. Some families already come together saying like, we know we want to be in a pod together, but if you don't have that, then we help match families up. The second thing is that we also match them with a teacher. So we do all the teacher recruiting and vetting and hiring. So we're going to match everyone with a teacher. The third thing is we provide a network for those teachers. So once the teacher is hired, that's not the last step with them. We're going to provide ongoing support and make sure that they have a network of peers that they can go to to troubleshoot along the way to get inspiration, make sure they have all the resources they need to be as successful as possible. And then the fourth thing is that we provide guidance to those families to support them in having conversations that could potentially be awkward or difficult around both safety, but also just expectations for what's going to be happening with the pod and provide a network both for families and for teachers.

Gotcha. And a big piece. Obviously you all share a very Progressive pedagogical approach from a curriculum perspective that play into the learning pods offering.

So the way we've set it up is that there are two sort of learning blocks. It starts at 9 o' clock in the morning, goes all the way to 2pm for elementary School K through 4. And the morning block is more aligned with the students own school's work, the distance learning work that they will be assigned. So our POD teacher will be helping them. They prepare lessons, they'll prepare sort of like workshops around like what they have to do for their own schools that they register.

Is your assumption, by the way. Sorry to interrupt for one second. Is your assumption that most people signing up will still be enrolled in their home school or not necessarily.

No. Absolutely. So they're going to be enrolled. Learning pods is not a school in itself. So you're either enrolled in your own school that you go to or if you really like our curriculum and our pedagogy, you're able to register with our own schools like Portfolio, Hudson Lab and Redbridge.

Gotcha.

But you are enrolled in a school and so that morning block is then sort of where you will do your schoolwork with the help of our teacher. But the afternoon block is where we will bring in things like project based learning, hands on learning, you know what Red Bridge really focuses on, which is student agency. So those are the things that we will bring together in the afternoon block.

Makes a ton of sense. I'm curious, you know, as people are sort of trying to figure out why go with, you know, a formal program as opposed to snapping this together myself. Orly, you talked about not just the matching function, but also helping give advice and the contracts. Is that a major value proposition of it or as people are talking to you and signing up, what's driving them toward this solution?

Yeah, I think a few things. One, it is that we're finding quality teachers. That's not that easy to do, but all of us are heads of school so that is what we do professionally and know what to look for. A second thing is, I mean there's just a, you know, if you want to do this properly then you need to think about like payroll and insurance and you know, what guarantees are you giving your teachers? And you know, if you're hiring a high quality teacher, you, you want to make sure you're treating them well. And that's something that we can really provide not only just with our systems, but also all of our teachers will be in pods themselves and so they'll be connected with other POD teachers and through that they'll be getting support which will allow for more satisfaction, relationship building, and I think a better experience for all of our stakeholders.

I mean, just think of it this way, that, you know, you have these pods, you know, all across the country, but what's behind them? And in our case, learning pods that three schools that are behind them. So there's a team of educators and we are putting a team of educators for just learning part. So there's going to be an academic director, there's going to be like a head of school who's, who's an educator as well, has run schools, who's run like some campuses of schools and stuff. So it's a whole team that we are providing because, you know, like Orly said, it's not something that, you know, okay, we hire a teacher, you know, we give them the address and we say, all right, we're done. Right. It's all about like, that's where it all begins, in fact, you know, and what the first semester looks like, what the first week or first month, first semester, all of that looks like. Right. We're planning through all of that stuff.

Gotcha. And I'm curious on the teacher side of this, because you are recruiting so many more teachers than you would have ordinarily. What's that process look like? What are you hearing from teachers on the ground?

Yeah, so we're recruiting all across the country for one thing.

So.

And you know, it's all.

So that's a major difference from businesses.

Usual. Yeah, exactly. And it's all virtual, you know, interviewing and whatnot. So all of our teacher applicants submit their resume and fill out a form just telling us more about themselves, but also describing their experience with project based learning as a starting point. And then after that, we ask qualified applicants for a video sample from their classroom. And it could be, you know, virtual instruction, it could be from before the pandemic or something else creative. We evaluate that teaching sample and make sure that what we're seeing would work well in a home setting with a small group of students. Then after that, one of our team members will interview them live and get to know the teacher that way. Then we do reference checks and background checks and are really secure on that front. And then we have to make sure they're in the right location and that they have experience with the ages that the families have. So there are a lot of steps to make sure that both the teacher candidates and the families align along the way.

One of the things that's been so interesting, just hearing you both Talk about this right now is how much of a challenge this moment has been for school heads who are just dealing with their school. You all are running your schools, setting them up and now standing up this organization. Baber, talk about the complexity of sort of like that ambidextrous, I guess, footing, if you will.

Yeah, that means, you know, sleep time is a shorter and shorter. You know, that's happens and I think it's just. So you are running a separate organization, which is your school, but we are leveraging a lot from that experience as well. So the teams are absolutely separate. We're not involving our school teams into this. But we've learned so much in the past few years about schools, about education and like, you know, and, you know, how to set up some of these things that, that has actually been leveraged into learning pods. And I think we also come from, you know, our experiences are diverse. It's not just been in education. So there are things like around the processes, around hiring teachers, for example, or forming pods, for example. There are experiences that we have outside of the education field that has helped us in putting this together as well. We now put a good team in place for the learning pods as well. So the past couple of months we've been sort of just going, you know, completely heads down into, into this, but now we have a good team around this as well, which is very important.

What have you guys learned from each other in this? Because, you know, you all represent some common philosophies, if you will, around schooling, but you have different points of emphasis. For sure, like that stood out when you, when you talk about your vision for your schools. What have you taken from each other in this process that's even maybe evolved how you're thinking about education or what you're doing in your home school or something like that. I'd love each of you to actually to address this. Maybe Baba go first and then Orly.

Look, I've learned a lot. I mean, it's just, I mean, I think one of the things is that, you know, when you're running your own school, you sort of like kind of heads down and just dealing with your parents and with your team and everything. And you know, we do have this innovative school cooperative which, where we have our touch points, like, you know, weekly meetings or monthly meetings and things like that. But just being, being together with Orly, with Kate and Stacy and you know, my co founder, Doug and I, like, you just learn so much, you know, from each other. So that has been really powerful. At least, you know, to me, it's just been really powerful. And you know, I think because of that, we strengthen our schools as well, you know, so it's, it's a lot of work. It's going like, you know, sometimes in all of these different directions and you feel like you have a whiplash. But I think a lot of it is just, you know, the learning experience has just been amazing, at least from my perspective.

Yeah. What about you, Orly?

Yeah. Well, the nice thing is that the. Our three schools and the school leaders have been learning from each other for a long time now. So Bob and I first met when he came to visit a school I was working at previously, the Khan Lab School. And then I came out to visit Hudson Lab School, and we've all been in conversation for a number of years now. So it's really cool to be able to work on something together. I think what we're learning is a combination of nitty gritty things like, oh, this is how you use HubSpot and it's useful and that's a good tool to know about to more like mindsets. You know, for example, I. My background, I started off as an elementary school teacher, but the other founders, I would say, are like real entrepreneurs. And so just like seeing that mindset in action and how everything has come together has been enjoyable for me and you know, a nice part of the learning experience, but then also just processes like here's a good way to structure a meeting or, you know, communication, whatnot. So there are lots of small and large things that I think we're learning from one another along the way that you only get when you actually dive into a project together, which is the same for our students.

That's true. It's a good reflection of the learning in action, if you will, eating your own dog food. So start to get into a little bit deeper in the mechanics of a couple things and then I want to zoom out. But first, Mandy has a question watching right now, and she asked, can you form a pod with three different grades and so love you to each address? Sort of, I guess the multi age grouping piece of this.

Yeah, we generally recommend 2 years of age difference for like a more optimal experience, but it can go beyond that depending on the family's needs and the students. You know, the schools that I've worked in in the past have been very inclusive of multi age groupings and there are benefits to it and there are challenges as well.

Gotcha. And then I guess the other piece that I'm hearing a lot about is people have Been asking how does the pricing model work of what you all are offering? And I think the other piece of this is probably through an equity frame. Right. There's a lot of conversation right now of those who get access to these types of experiences and those who don't have the resources to get access to this and the widening equity gaps in society. So first, I guess explain the pricing model that Learning Pods has and then second, start to situate it against the bigger backdrop of that conversation. Sure, yeah, go for it.

Yeah. I can certainly talk about the fee structure. The way we structured is that elementary school pod will cost $125,000 for 10 months. And there can be three students in it or there can be 10 students in it. The price per pod does not change. So if you do have. Actually I misspoke, you can have three to nine students. So, you know, if you have nine students, it actually comes down to about $1,300 a month for each child. And if you actually break it down on a per hour basis, which is somehow been talked about in a number of articles now, our pricing comes out to be about $13 an hour per child. If you are in a pot of nine kids, those are in the fifteen, twenty dollar range as well around that range. So we are very comparable in that sense. The $125,000 may look really big, but if you break it down to a per hour number, it's actually pretty good. And we are providing all of the services that we are just to actually talk a little bit about the cost. Our major cost is the teacher salary and the support staff behind the teacher. That's, that's our major cost. So that's why it's priced that way. For Element, for preschool pods, the price is $60,000 per 10 months and that breaks down and that's about three to the number of kids is two to six in that case.

Gotcha. And so 60,000 total across the families. Is that per pod?

Yes.

Yep, yep. Gotcha. So, so, and just to double click on that for, for a moment, as people are sort of conceptualizing this, how many hours are you getting in coverage are you getting from a pod? Per day?

Yeah, per day you're getting five. So it's nine to two.

Okay.

And then we will run it for approximately 180 days.

Gotcha. Terrific. Now I'd love you to think about. So how are you thinking about the equity question and who gets access to this and so forth? I know this is something that Orly, we've had a lot of conversations Historically about. So I'd love you to situate that in that conversation and then talk about more broadly what districts ought to be doing right now.

Sure. So we are taking a few measures to make this accessible to as many students as possible. First of all, we've built in a portion of everyone's tuition going towards financial aid. So we do have a financial aid bucket that families can apply for. In addition, we allow families to commit extra to financial aid. And we already have a good bucket of that as well. And then we've also been starting to have conversations with school districts across the country just to see how we can be helpful in case districts want to move to a pod format themselves. And we think we could help in a number of ways. And one of those ways is supporting teachers. And that could be with districts, but it also could be families who are putting pods together themselves and maybe can't afford our pod structure, but would like their teacher to get that support. So that's something we're willing to help out on also. We're just trying to figure out basically where the need is and whether the skills that we're building can be helpful to other communities.

Gotcha. Are you seeing districts actively wrestle with this? I mean, actually, I'll sort of put my sense out there, which is. It seems like this is actually a very interesting opportunity where districts could, rather than fight what a lot of parents are doing around creating pods, they could draft onto it and actually make sure that it becomes a. An inclusive way to make sure everyone's served, but create a far more personalized project based set of experiences that are more authentic learning opportunities for all students and maybe reinvent schooling through that. I'm not seeing a heck of a lot of districts jump on that. I think some of that is liability concerns, some of that is just operational concerns, and some of that I think is antagonism. I'm just sort of curious what you're. What you're seeing on the ground.

Yeah, I know, it's true. It's a. There certainly have been school districts that have been interested. There are charter schools who are interested, who are, you know, working in low income areas. And you know, with one of them, we would. We had a recent meeting and they said that during the spring semester when everybody was going online, 40% of their kids did not engage. So that's a huge number, huge percentage of kids who were just not able to engage for a variety of reasons on distance learning. And how can we. In fact, it's difficult for parents. It's an issue of technology. It's an issue of getting the kids to come and log in and things like that. So if there was a group of kids that could assemble somewhere and either one parent, for example, from that school is willing to commit themselves to run that pod, we could partner with this school and actually put the right processes in place to actually help the parent who's supervising the kids. Alternatively, there may be teachers who are not comfortable coming in, but are willing to go into a podcast because of this, you know, the size. And we could in fact then help the teacher be trained right. In both, sort of like doing something like this in a private kind of setting and also help them with curriculum around like project based learning, student agency and things like that. So there are a number of ways to hash out which would. In fact, I absolutely believe what you're saying, Michael, that this is not something that should be sort of like considered like, oh, we are going against the public schools and we're not. We're in fact actually encouraging everybody to stay in their public schools and then do this. Right. But there is a huge opportunity for all of us to come together as a community of educators, you know, and figure things out, because that could have long term consequences or how we tackle this whole inequity issue.

Yeah, no, that makes a ton of sense from my perspective. And as we wrap up, I guess what I'd love you both to do is sort of one hot take. Not on learning pods, but one hot take on what is this going to look like in the fall? And when we look back on this experience, what are we going to say we learned from the school year ahead? Robert, you get to go first and then. Or we'll buy orly a minute. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the home field advantage.

But yeah, look, I think there's going to be a lot of learnings and I feel like there's going to be good and bad learnings. I think we learn both good and bad things. I think, I think one of the things that we learn is that can we moving forward be a platform or have we learned in a way to collect a number of learners together and have them come together because they want to actually learn something new, you know, so it doesn't have to be just sort of like an academic sort of perspective, but even outside of that, you know, if you, if you want to have a group of kids learn photography or filmmaking or something like this, how do you actually get them to come together? What are the set of questions you ask the families and you say, okay, yeah, you can create a pod and then we can provide an instructor, you know, so I think there's things that will come out of this which will be fascinating and which will inform us about what to do, you know, as we, as we move forward and get out, even out of this pandemic.

Terrific. Orly.

Yeah, I guess a couple of thoughts. So, you know, even when the pandemic's over, there will probably be up. There will probably be times in the future where we'll have to shut down school again, whether it's a snow day or some other extreme weather event. And so this flexibility in, in person and virtual learning will be there. And I think a big takeaway from the need to, to have that flexibility, to go back and forth, is the need to teach students to drive their own learning. And obviously that's a theme for me, but I think that this time having students at home with virtual learning has reinforced to parents as well, everywhere that if students have the mindset and skill to direct their own learning, they will be much more successful and adaptable when these crises arrive. And it's something that's useful in a distance learning setting, but it's also super useful in a traditional school setting as well. So I think. Well, I hope that one of the takeaways is that we need to do a lot more to actually build those skills in students to be able to organize themselves, manage their time, set goals for themselves so that they're ready to take charge of their learning when the opportunity arrives. The other thing I think will be a takeaway from this time is the importance of relationships. And you know, when everyone moved to distance learning in March, they already had months of building in person relationships to kind of ground them in the months following. But we're going into a new school year where kids have never met their teachers before, and that relationship building is going to look very different. And when you start the school year not having ever met your teacher in person, when they're just an image on a screen, well, like, why is that image any better than another tab on your computer screen? And I think to make that time worthwhile for students, teachers are going to have to work a lot harder to build those relationships and to individualize so that their tab is the one that kids stay on. And the whole benefit of learning pods is that we're bringing that relationship back.

Yeah, that makes it. Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. It's interesting. For those that don't know, Orly and I worked on a course many years ago for Coursera blended learning. And we one of my favorite stories from that was Brian Greenberg saying, you know, for years our sort of theory of improving schools was to make teachers row harder, if you will. But what if we just gave students the oars themselves and had them help row the boat? And that's what I hear you saying in much of this and then obviously the connective tissue of relationships being critical. So I'm deeply appreciative to both of you. I know you're incredibly busy right now. I'll put the website down there at the the bottom, learning pods.com check it out, learn more. We're going to see a lot of services like this right now. But you all obviously have developed a strong ethos and philosophy on how you can really support learners and educators through this. So just huge thanks for doing that.

Thank you for having us.

Yes. And we will continue the conversation next time. Thanks so much.