Schools Need to Undo the Damage of Pods
Many students spent last year surrounded only by those most like themselves.
For millions of Americans, the pandemic meant one simple thing: not interacting with nearly as many people as they had before the pandemic. Amid restrictions on large gatherings, a dramatic shift to small, sheltered groups—“pods”—took place, especially among school-age kids and their families. Researchers estimate that 3 million students spent time learning in these pods over the past year.
I witnessed some of this firsthand after my high school, Sidwell Friends, closed. During the early months of the pandemic, I had the good fortune not only of being in a safe bubble (my mother, a doctor, moved out
