Hi, I'm Dan Pramak, and welcome to a special four-part weekend edition of Axios Recap,

focused on the unique challenges of Back to School in 2020.

This is all tied to an Axios deep dive presented by Pearson,

and this particular episode digs into the rise of learning pods.

That conversation with Axios's Marisa Fernandez in 15 seconds.

We're joined now by Axios' Marisa Fernandez.

So Marisa, let's start here with the most basic.

What is a learning pod?

So the idea of pods surfaced when many parents and even some

teachers kind of emerged from this online only fiasco in the spring, right? So they were just

genuinely concerned this experience would be repeated in the fall of their child not getting

the educational, social, physical activity that they thought

they deserved. And also, parents' work lives were completely disrupted as well. They wanted

more supervision, but ultimately it came down to they wanted a teacher or a tutor or some type

of child care professional hired by the hour with a group of neighborhood

or community students that could learn every day together in a socially distant format.

In some cases, this is an actual replacement, right? Kids literally unenrolling from school.

It basically becomes homeschooling. And in other cases,

it's a supplement, right? You know, you do your Zoom, full remote classes, and then homework help,

as you say, socialization, child care to a certain extent, but also additional education, right? There's

kind of a wide range. Absolutely. It's definitely a case-by-case basis. We're seeing both,

it's an all-virtual situation of their school or it's children

...