Samantha had been a veteran educator for fourteen years, first as a classroom teacher and then a principal, when the pandemic shut down schools. Last year, when she learned about the then-growing learning pod movement, she thought starting one would help solve several immediate problems.
“[My daughter] needs social interaction,” she said in an interview. “I know there’s other kids out there that need social interaction. I know there’s working parents out there that could use the support of somebody like me, and then it just snowballed from there.”