Some families are teaming up to form "pandemic pods," where groups of students receive professional instruction for several hours each day. It's a 2020 version of the one-room schoolhouse, privately funded. And it's - obviously - picking others off. There are cries of elitism. To be sure, one headline covering the trend read as such: Parents with money, connections are hiring teachers for ‘pandemic pods.’ It's a bizarre way to frame the phenomenon. These are parents who are frustrated with fickle governance, of the uncertainty, and are taking matters into their own hands, along with other parents, rotating households for learning and all chipping in to pay the teachers. The bigger, more interesting, question - for me anyway - is, Wouldn't this mean said teacher is either double-dipping or straight-up moonlighting (even if they aren't technically presently working - they ARE being paid). Weeks before the new school year will start, one journalist wrote "the trend is a stark sign of how the pandemic will continue to drive inequity in the nation's education system. But the parents planning or considering this say it's an extreme answer to an extreme situation." Doesn't make them wealthy; makes them desperate.