Area businesses, organizations offer learning pod options

Some Dripping Springs area businesses and organizations have come up with some offerings to add to the educational experience of students who will not be attending class as usual. They’re doing so by means of organizing and/or hosting pods--a small group of students learning together with the help of a tutor or facilitator. Head to Toe Dance Studio will be offering a program for remote learners who are in grades 3rd through 8th.

“We typically pick kids up from school and bring them to dance. Well, parents aren’t going to need that,” Anne Brown said, Owner of Head to Toe Dance.

“We started talking about what parents needed and how we could help our dancers and possibly the community in this crazy time.” So she came up with the idea of having remote learners come to the dance studio Monday through Friday for a full school day.

“They’re doing their distance learning from their schools, so we’ll help facilitate that,” Brown explained. “We are not taking more than 9 kids per room,” Brown said. She will have two separate rooms with two separate facilitators for a total of 18 kids max and because they are a dance studio, parents can expect their students to have some time to move. “We’re doing some kind of dance or fitness class every single day,” Brown said.

The Westcave Outdoor Discovery Center, is also looking to host students and has developed a program they call Westcave E2 Outdoor School. As the name suggests, the focus with this program is to get the kids outside.

“It gives them time and space to learn, explore, develop and grow. It gives them a background in nature and then a little time also with other kids their age,” Trevor Hance said, Executive Director of Westcave Outdoor Discovery Center.

The program is structured for students between the ages of 9 and 13, grades 4th through 7th to attend a full school day, twice a week. Hance said this type of structure works well for homeschool students as well as those who will be following the asynchronous model of remote learning.

“We’re just excited. It’s an interesting reason behind why we’re launching it,” Hance said, referring to the pandemic. “But it’s a wonderful extension for the work that we’ve been doing for a long time.”

For more information about these programs, you can visit headtotoedance. com/ and westcave.org/.