Alternative Ways to Educate Children Post-Pandemic

After over a year and a half since the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the entire United States, parents are finding alternative ways to educate their children rather than sending them to fully in-person public schools in New York City. The way parents choose to educate their children depends and directly correlates to their employment situations. Parents who work full-time at their offices need their children to attend class in person all day so they do not have to worry about childcare. During the pandemic, parents began to pull their children out of school to homeschool them. Now that businesses are returning back to fully in-person, parents are unable to stay home and teach their children. Here comes the idea of the homeschooling pods.

2020-2021 ACADEMIC YEAR ENROLLMENT CHANGE

There are 5 main ways to educate children post/ during the pandemic. Below is a designed homeschooling pod proposal that would be funded by New York State. There would be 2 forms of these homeschooling pods- hybrid and fully remote. The hybrid version of the homeschooling pod is designed for upper levels of education, middle and high school students who are able to stay home alone one day a week. The fully in-person version of the homeschooling pods is designed for children in elementary school.

Map of the Brooklyn School Districts with each School Point Location shown by a red dot. This map shows the enrollment at the beginning of the 2020 (September) school year, the enrollment changes based on the previous year, the percent of students that were remote at the beginning of the 2020 school year, and the percent of those remote students that were remote due to economic needs. The students remote due to economic needs were remote because they either had to work or stay home for their families, at the beginning of the 2020 (September) school year. This data is represented based on the size of the circle. The bigger the circle, the larger of an enrollment in the beginning of the 2020 academic year.

Each parents employment situation has several education options that they could potentially use to educate their child post-pandemic.

Some include the traditional education styles, while others are new design proposals that started to form since the pandemic.

The most interesting, and rising popularity of the homeschooling pods allows parents to manipulate their child’s schedule and education to meet their needs, desires, and schedule.

In doing so, 2 homeschooling pod proposals were created so that more parents would want to enroll their students into this new education system.

Spacious, NYC

The homeschooling pods will take place in one of 3 locations: Cafes, Parks, and Students Homes. The goal would be to have all homeschooling pods be located in a cafe in their correlating neighborhood, but with the number of students in the area, there are just not enough cafes in the city to do so or space. This idea originated from research done about Spacious, a company in NYC that helps businesses find and secure a space. No matter if it is a large company or a one-person operation, they find spots throughout the city for people to work. Their most popular request is restaurants. Workers are getting served, eating, and have great table space to work at. With this, the idea of having the homeschool pods located at cafes emerged for cafes are open during school hours, offer indoor and outdoor space, food, and beverages, and great tables and chairs for students to work at throughout the city.

Maps of Schools and Cafes

Brooklyn Neighborhoods

Examples of Brooklyn Neighborhoods with marked locations of where students would be attending school if they were to choose in the homeschooling pod program. This includes the schools that are already pre-existing, parks, cafes, and residential areas. Ideally, all of the pods would take place in a cafe in their correlated neighborhood, but due to the number of students in the area and how many students choose to participate in this program, other locations must be considered.

These are just 2 examples of neighborhoods in Brooklyn and how the home school pods would work in this area. The blue areas represent the schools that students would be attending and the other remaining colors demonstrate the places that students could potentially have their homeschool pod take place, depending on the day, weather, or other circumstances. The main goal would be to have all of the pods be taken place in cafes, but there are certainly not enough cafes for that to be able to happen, therefore other arrangements would have to be made. These could be at people’s homes or in parks. No matter the location, the state would still provide the same resources for those families participating in the homeschooling pod program.

Where Students Will be Attending School Depending on the Day of the Week

Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY

Possibility of locations where each student will be each day of the week

Brownsville, Brooklyn, NY

Possibility of locations where each student will be each day of the week