Some North Texas Teachers Prepare To Educate From Home During Pandemic: 'It's A Hard Dilemma'
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - As back-to-school looms, some North Texas teachers are deciding to take their safety into their own hands.
For those teachers, their students' homes will be their classrooms this fall.
Tayla Baah taught pre-K through 1st grade at DISD.
"We're here to make sure they our kids are safe over ourselves," she said. "But as teachers, we have our own families. We have our own kids."
Baah has a 3-year-old daughter who was born prematurely, and that made the decision for her.
"Being in that situation and having to think about my daughter versus the lives of those kids that I'm educating, it's a hard dilemma that you're put in," she said.
Sshe will be homeschooling, or microschooling as it's now called, anywhere from one family to several together in a pandemic pod. She now has her own company of tutors called Exceeding Education.
"The demand has been great. It has been overwhelming almost," she said. "Homeschooling is all the rage right now."
Baah says she's pricing by the hour, days or month. The hourly rate is $35. For a month of full-time teaching, she's charging $3,360.
She's not alone.
A Facebook group called Pandemic Pods and Microschools was created less than two weeks ago and already has more than 8,000 members.
Baah says it's a lot less stressful given the current climate.
"I'm not having to worry about 20 kids at one time saying safe and complying with these new social distancing rules," she said.
And, she believes, it's the best way to juggle safety and academic achievement.
"For me, it's just about finding that balance where I'm doing what I'm passionate about but at the same time staying safe for myself and my family and for those kids I'm going to be working with as well."