Solutions to address pandemic disruption among students have ranged from extended summer school to training teachers and paraprofessionals for intensive tutoring-all rightly focused on academic interventions, but few addressing student isolation directly. They experienced isolation from their peers, teachers and entire communities, leading to increased mental health challenges that some practitioners have referred to as a “ mental health tsunami.” Isolation was at the core of the challenges faced by students. Students of all ages, from early childhood through college, have experienced the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, whether it was from colleges and universities abruptly shutting down in March, leaving college students stranded on campus, or the learning loss experienced by K-12 students as they navigated remote learning. And by January, we had come up with an idea and were ready to pilot it. We ultimately agreed that our priority was to address what we saw as our students’ most urgent need during the pandemic: forging meaningful relationships and a sense of community. We were searching for a solution that would be a low lift but go a long way-a combination hard to come by in education. Our staff’s capacity was limited, and our resources even more so. But I worried I couldn’t help them to the extent that they needed and deserved. I started to ask myself: What can we do with our current capacity? How will we do it? With so many needs, what should we try to address first?Īs a first-generation student of color from a low-income background, and as a former teen parent who had overcome countless challenges in my childhood and adulthood to become Breakthrough SJC’s executive director, I understood how important it was that we support our students through this tumultuous period. Our program, Breakthrough San Juan Capistrano (SJC), had provided grocery cards to families, referred them to food and housing assistance programs, and connected them to mental health services. Every other text message I got was from a student or family member asking for help. Local schools had reverted to fully remote learning, restrictions had increased to prevent community spread, and our students and families were experiencing higher levels of COVID-19 infection, food insecurity, housing insecurity and isolation from their peers than had been the case since the pandemic started nearly nine months earlier. In Orange County, Calif., COVID-19 cases were rising exponentially.

Might be time up pandemic pod