Teaching a Pandemic Learning Pod with Friendship, Fantasy and Fairness
Abstract
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to overshadow our lives, educators have taken up the challenge of teaching through these difficult times, sometimes with little to no support. Early childhood education in particular is seen as an essential service to support the functioning of families during the pandemic and beyond. Pandemic learning pods consisting of small groups of children, facilitated by a parent or a teacher, have become popular and can be found in various configurations to suit the needs of the families.
In this paper I delineate my experiences with teaching a small group of eight children aged three and a half to seven years old in a pandemic learning pod. I explain how this pod was formed by including the voices of the parents as well as highlight the voices of the children and how they adapted to the new way of coming to school. In doing so, I will follow the lead of Vivian Paley’s (2007; 2009) 3 Fs in early childhood: friendship, fantasy, and fairness as a conceptual framework.
I use my reflective notes, interviews with parents, email correspondence with families, and fieldnotes from classroom observations as data sources to provide a multifaceted picture of teaching a pandemic learning pod. Finally, I argue that using learning pods as an example, early childhood education can benefit from rethinking and reimagining educational spaces and configurations to be more equitable and just for all children.
Keywords: Pandemic Learning Pod, COVID-19 Pandemic, Early Childhood Education, Emergent Curriculum.
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