So what’s the Facebook-fueled fad about ‘pandemic pods‘ all about? As with many fads, it’s something that’s been around for more than a century. Since 1906, to be exact.

And the model? A small house –a casa. Basically a ‘house of children’ or ‘Casa dei Bambini.’ That was, of course, the first successful hands-on school begun by Maria Montessori. If Facebook had been around, someone would have called these nano-schools, or a ‘practical life pods.’ Maria Montessori didn’t need likes. If she had followers, they included poor  and working-class parents with challenged kids. Oh, and there were folks like Alexander Graham Bell, an early promoter of her method when it came the America.

This prolonged pandemic, and the need to isolate ourselves has thrown a large curve ball at us parents, business owners and most importantly, children. Suddenly the large ‘campuses’ with sometimes 3000 students are frightening. The home-school model or the Montessori ‘house’ clearly addresses many of the concerns parents have. Not the masks or no-masks, or 6-foot-rule question. But questions and concerns such as:

• What’s the alternative to sticking my child in front of an iPad?
• My child needs to be outdoors as much as academics. More trees than apps!
• Social media is killing socialization. I need a school that is ‘offline’ for eight hours of the day.

As schools get ready to make the large-school experience more engaging, and personal, more of these models will crop up. Maria Montessori would be pleased. Children need a safe place to learn, exchange ideas and socialize not something akin to an office space, where everyone’s glued to a screen.