Medium

Last week, I submitted a letter of intent to homeschool my son for the 2020–2021 school year. It was a decision that was informed by many factors, including the transition to remote learning and the connection between COVID-19 related precautions and the safety of black and brown students.

The

Washington Post

Atlanta, Georgia, parent Nikolai Pizarro de Jesus has homeschooled her 12-year-old son since he was in kindergarten and has been busy in recent weeks helping families organize more socio-economically accessible pods by matching them with homeschooling families who wouldn’t necessarily need to hire a teacher.

GIZMODO

“Pods are not the problem,” at-home educational consultant Nikolai Pizarro de Jesus, told us. “Policy is the problem.” Pizarro recently founded the Facebook group “BIPOC-led pandemic pods...
 

VICE

Before coronavirus, Nikolai worked as an advocate for homeschooling Black and Brown families. Now parents are turning to her for schooling advice during the pandemic. *podcast 

NEW YORK TIMES

Consider also hiring a teacher who is Black, Indigenous or a person of color (B.I.P.O.C.), and asking them to implement a social justice-themed curriculum, said Nikolai Pizarro, an educator, author and mother in Atlanta who runs the Facebook group BIPOC-Led Pandemic Pods and Microschools.  

MASHABLE

First, we shouldn't expect parents to reduce the inequality of this moment by forgoing in-person education or caregiving support for their own children. For Nikolai Pizarro, an educator and homeschooling-unschooling consultant in Atlanta who formed the BIPOC-led pandemic pods and microschools Facebook... 

POP SUGAR

Additionally, mothers like Nikolai Pizarro de Jesus, a mother and educator, have begun making their own Facebook groups that specifically serve the BIPOC community.

"We started this concept back in May because a lot of parents had to work multiple jobs," said Pizarro de Jesus. "We didn't call them pods. We were trying to create support centers. A lot of Black and Brown parents have been working through the pandemic, they've been working the entire time...

MIT Technology 

Review

“The racial wealth divide is real,” says Nikolai Pizarro, a homeschooling mom who founded a Facebook group called BIPOC-led pandemic pods and microschools and an Instagram account, raisingreaders, devoted to “teaching Black & Latinx parents how to create high quality literacy environments.”

Pizarro says she has a slew of new users posting questions on her Facebook group....

Wall Street

Journal

Angie Evans was determined to make online learning for her children better this fall after a disastrous spring, when schools closed with little notice and no time to prepare.

But like many parents around the country, her race to join with other like-minded families in so-called pandemic pods was soon derailed by fears that she was teaming with the haves and leaving out the have-nots...

NPR - 1A

"Many of our students will thrive because the public school system is fundamentally inequitable, and now they're outside of oppressive systems and able to learn more freely," says Nikolai Pizarro, founder of the BIPOC-led pandemic pods and micro-schools Facebook group. 

*podcast