Host Quick-Start Guide

Edefy brings together Hosts, teachers and families and helps facilitate and sequence the necessary connections, communications, parent-teacher choices, agreements, financial obligations and payments necessary for Pods to form and thrive.

When forming a Pod, in order to honor the economic commitments from and to all parties involved, Edefy requires a minimum threshold of 8 enrolled students to secure a teacher under contract. As soon as a teacher secures 8 enrolled students, the Pod can activate for the school year. Pods may enroll additional students up to a maximum of 12. We recommend first-time Host sites aim for 2 Pods their first year, as it helps to have two teachers on site for redundancy. That’s just 2 teacher candidates and 16 children for two Pods to get started. As Pods meet throughout the year, interest typically grows by word of mouth, and pent up demand needed to form and activate additional Pods if you choose to. 

To get the best results, please read and follow this quick-start guide:

1. Designate your account owner – this can be someone on staff, or a special email account you create for this purpose
2. Download the Edefy App at edefy.us and create an account tied to the owner determined above
3. Create a Site and submit it for approval – Most sites that meet established criteria will be approved quickly
4. Adding Administrator(s) – This could be a member of your staff, or, if there is an experienced teacher in your community interested and willing to lead a Pod, you can also designate that teacher as an Admin on the Host account. Teachers are often the best admins, and besides the missional component, they are incentivized by the earnings they can generate from leading a Pod. If competent and highly trusted, you may even want to leave the following steps and further administration up to them, such as selecting other teacher candidates and determining the Pod arrangements. 
5. Determine Program Type – Consider the community demand from teachers and families for a Hybrid or Full-Time equivalent program and choose your days per week
   1. Hybrid programs are generally 2-3 days with the teacher onsite and the other days at home. If you are just starting Pod Schooling for the first time, we recommend starting with this homeschool hybrid type program.
   2. Full Time equivalent programs will be either 4 or 5 days per week with the teacher onsite.
6. Invite and review teacher applications – Pod Schooling is largely a direct family to teacher marketplace. The quality of teachers is the primary driver of demand. Ideally, the Host should invite a few high quality teacher candidates well known within the community to be lead Pod teachers. If they are already known by families within the community, and if their teaching profile is immediately respectable, families will be more likely to enroll. Other teachers on the Edefy platform may apply to teach at your site and you may review and accept or reject any applications as you choose. 
7. Select Teachers for Pod formation – From your list of applicants, select up to two teachers to begin forming Pods. Edefy limits initial teacher selection to two in order to prevent Pod dilution, which occurs when there are multiple teachers but not enough students to achieve the launch threshold of 8 students per teacher. Don’t worry, once the first two Pods launch, you can add more teachers and rearrange students for further optimization as you go. 
8. Share the opportunity with the community and invite them to join your waitlist – Your waitlist is the list of families allowed to connect with and enroll to the teachers available at your site. The larger your waitlist the more likely Pods will fill. Share and discuss the opportunity with your community. Post links to Edefy on your website and social media feeds. If you have email or text lists, send out the word and encourage your community to share and invite other families. Feel free to share helpful links like this explainer from Verathon Academy or this overview from Edefy.
9. Enrollment – After teachers are selected and students are listed on your waitlist, the families and teachers can engage directly to form the Pods. Teachers can invite students from the waitlist to enroll to their Pod, and families can pick a teacher and apply. Both parties must accept the invites from each other. The Host can also make student-teacher match recommendations. If the Host desires, they can choose to make Host approval required for all placements from their Site Settings, in which case the Host will need to approve the student-teacher matches from their Site Manager screen. Again, the goal is to get to 8 students per teacher to secure the teacher under contract for the year and activate the Pod. Children are considered Pre-enrolled until the Pod reaches its minimum student threshold and launches for the year. If the Pod is not able to achieve 8 students, or the teacher leaves and cannot be replaced, Edefy will automatically refund all enrollment fees to the families.
10. Pod Optimization – Over time, more students and teachers may join the Site, shifting the variables for optimal Pod arrangements. Edefy makes it easy for all parties to see these improving options and for students to change Pod assignments per Site IF the family, the affected teachers, and the Host Admin are in agreement and approve the changes. Once the first two Pods fill, additional teachers can be added to form additional Pods, one at a time. Pods are flexible and can serve students across grade ranges, so the more students that enroll, the further you may want to optimize student placement in Pods over time, up until or even after the Pods begin meeting. Edefy makes this easy to do via the “Pod Change” tool.

FAQ’s for Hosts

1. How is this different from starting a school?
   • Hosting a few Pods at your facility is very different from starting a school. For one, the families register as Homeschooled and their teacher is responsible for directing the vast majority of administrative activities with their assigned families. Also, Pod Schooling is ultimately a decision made between the families and their teacher, so the typical regulatory burden associated with being a school does not apply. Also, instead of having to hire administrators and teachers up front, then allocating significant financial resources  on marketing, Edefy allows churches to explore a no risk, no obligation pathway to gauge demand for Pod Schooling in their area and at their facility. Commitments are not actually required until all variables align with the various parties’ preferences.  
2. What is Pod Schooling? 
   • See “Introduction to Pod Schooling” above
3. What responsibilities do Hosts have? 
   • The responsibilities of a “Host” are primarily to:
     1. Provide rooms for Pods to meet in an appropriate facility
     2. Help identify and select teachers in the congregation or community to lead Pods
     3. Spread the word to families in the congregation and surrounding community to help teachers achieve a minimum of 8 students to launch their Pod.
   • Depending on Host preferences, Edefy provides for optional oversight of the following:
     1. Approval of families who are able to join the Pods on site
     2. Control of the Pod arrangements – assigning and approving student to teacher matches 
4. How much should a Host expect to earn for making rooms available?
   • Each Pod that forms and uses a room generates income for the Host. When the Host submits their site, Edefy automatically calculates and displays to the Host a per room guaranteed payment depending on days per week of the program and cost of living index of the geographic region. Additional income will come in the form of rewards that accumulate over time based on teacher compensation levels, student-teacher ratios, and the community feedback regarding the Host’s facility and hospitality. 
   • Example: In Portland, Oregon the basic payment would be around $500 per month and per room for running a full time program, or $250/month per room for a 2 day per week program. The accumulated rewards can double that base payment, depending on enrollment. Again, this is per month and per room used by a Pod. Payments run 10 months from August to June each year (monthly payment X 10)
   • Should the Host choose to decline payment for rooms, the equivalent dollars will go directly to reducing the cost of tuition for families.
   • In the future, Edefy plans to add the ability for a Host to customize the income they earn. Eventually Host’s will be able to increase their rental income if demand from families on the Host Waitlist is greater than the availability of spaces in the Pods at a Host site. 
5. What costs are involved as a Host? 
   • Pod schooling is an income generator as Hosts will earn income on every room that ends up being used by a Pod. Edefy does recommend a minimal standard of equipment for any rooms that end up assigned to a Pod. However, that investment does not have to be made until a Pod is formed and attached to one of the Host rooms, in which case the Host is assured an income stream per room, and the up-front equipping budget makes sense with less than a 1 year payback. In many cases, the room may already be equipped with the recommended items, meaning no investment is necessary. In other cases, the assigned Teacher may not require our recommended items, and the Host and teacher may make alternative arrangements.
6. What equipment is required of Host facilities and in the rooms?
   • Facilities should have rooms that are securable (lockable or within a building that is lockable), high speed wifi access for the teacher, bathrooms near the learning rooms, and the teacher should have access to dumpsters directly or have their rooms included in the building’s regular janitorial services.
   • Room equipping is ultimately between the teachers and their Host. However, to manage expectations, Edefy requires that Hosts be willing to provide a basic list of equipment to their rooms, much of which may already exist in the room, but needs to also be accessible to the teacher. This includes tables and chairs for the teacher and 12 students, a projector,  whiteboard, and dedicated storage equivalent to a locking cabinet or cabinets with a total volume equivalent to  6ft tall, by 4ft wide, by 2 ft deep. 
7. How is the Host protected from liability?
   • Edefy understands the need for liability protections and therefore includes very strong liability protection language on behalf of Hosts within the site terms and conditions. In summary, families must waive liability to the Host in order for their children to have access to the facilities used by the Pod.
8. Are the rooms I make available for Pod schooling exclusive to the Pod?
   • No. Pods share the rooms and only use them during the school week, between 8:30am and 3:30pm. When the Pod is not meeting, the rooms will be free for the church to use per usual.
9.  What happens if the Pod participants damage something in the building?
   • As part of the terms and conditions parents are required to make compensation for anything their students damage should the Host determine it is egregious and outside the normal wear and tear of the building. Noticeable wear and tear on the buildings outside of the normal course should be minimal. 
10. What if a teacher needs to be removed or replaced?
    • Feedback mechanisms are built into the Edefy app to help families make decisions about the teachers. If enough families require a change in teacher, the app will notify the Host of the need for a replacement. Families can drive new teacher selection or the Host can nominate a replacement from the community.
11. What curriculum do Edefy Pods use?
    • There are many quality curriculums to choose from and education research is clear that curriculum choice (as long as there is one) is less important than having a quality, dedicated teacher invested personally in each child’s learning.
      A Host may predetermine the curriculum used at their Site, or VerathonED can work with Hosts to preload a suggested curriculum stack. Alternatively, once Pods are formed and launched in the spring, the desires of the teachers and families can be surveyed during the summer and an ultimate decision made prior to the start of the school year in the fall. Families with strong preferences are also encouraged to message their teachers directly.
      Whatever curriculum is decided on, teachers will generally begin to supplement individual student needs once the school year begins. 

Introduction to Pod Schooling

Pod Schooling is a personalized form of private education where families register their children as home-schooled, group them together, then hire a teacher directly to instruct and guide the learning.

The Pod School model can be understood as a kind of “Professional Homeschool” in that it combines the per-student personalization and family-like atmosphere of homeschool cooperatives with the professional instruction, guidance, and assessment abilities of a trained and qualified teacher. Pod Schooling is often recognized for its ability to deliver a premium experience and better education outcomes than typical private schools at an equivalent or lower cost to families.

Historically, this model of education has been predominantly limited to affluent families with the extraordinary time and financial resources to organize, fund, launch and manage them from year to year.

Edefy is making Pod Schooling available to communities everywhere by organizing and automating the complex logistics involved. 

Edefy limits Pods to 12 students per teacher, because the foundation of Pod Schooling’s effectiveness is the frequency of individual interaction between the teacher and a student. Children are then freed from a predetermined learning progression designed for the collective average and are instead able to learn according to their unique gifts and abilities. While schools everywhere like to say their instruction is “personalized”, as the number of students per teacher inevitably moves beyond 12 and approaches even 16-18 students, let alone the typical 20-30 students or more, teachers are forced to switch from individual student attention back to a standard mass instruction approach.

Pod Schooling’s personalization advantage is reinforced by the teacher being employed by and accountable to the parents directly. Each individual student represents a paying “client” for the teacher. This means the teacher is primarily incentivized to drive the best outcome possible for each of their students. Contrast this to the typical school model, where teachers are employed by the administration of the school and are primarily incentivized to keep the administration happy by following centralized mandates and programming.

While every Pod that forms is unique, the broader benefits to Pod Schooling include:

• Direct Accountability – Teachers who serve families directly are strongly incentivized to deliver quality student outcomes that match parent expectations. The higher trust and fully transparent relationships that form naturally increase teacher-parent communication, feedback, and collaboration around each child’s learning journey.
• Greater Personalization – Low teacher to student ratios (12 student max) enable highly personalized instruction and individualized learning pathways, freeing students from arbitrary one-size-fits-all pacing. Children progress according to individual abilities and needs, allowing a single Pod to effectively serve a range of ages/grades.
• Better Community Relationships – The small group learning environment promotes fast friendships among student peers and participating families, largely reducing the negative peer interactions children frequently experience in typical schooling models. 

The most commonly reported effects on students who switch to this model of education include:

• Improved mental and emotional health, social confidence and friendships

• Superior academic outcomes

• Greater joy for learning

• Deepened character formation

Try Pod Schooling on Edefy and get your child the attentive care they deserve.

About / Contact

What is Edefy? 

We built Edefy to bring personalized, private education to the world through Pod Schooling.

The Edefy mobile application allows families to match their children directly with preferred, values-aligned teachers at nearby Host Sites. Through Edefy, communities everywhere are free to organize and rapidly launch their own education solutions that can and often do outperform traditional public and private school models.

Historically, Pod Schools have been limited to families with the extra time, capital, and social networks necessary to establish, subsidize and operate them. Edefy was created to simplify and automate the process, making this powerful form of education available to communities everywhere.

Furthermore, Edefy can unlock significant economic value for families. Edefy allows families to pool their resources in order to hire the type of exceptional teachers who could work at private schools costing many times more than an Edefy Pod School.

Download Edefy to your mobile device from the App Store or Google Play. Search – edefy

Feel free to email questions to support at [email protected] or text us at ‪(503) 308-1449

What is VerathonED?

VerathonED is a non-profit 501c3 that champions Pod Schooling and advises and supports communities in the formation and ongoing management of their Pods and Pod School. Having previously managed Pods directly, VerathonED has been chosen by Edefy to provide optional council, experienced leadership, and Administrative support to the Hosts and Teachers leading the Pod Schooling revolution on the Edefy platform. 

VerathonED’s support is purely optional, and communities are welcome to establish their Pod-Schools however they prefer. But for any Hosts or Teachers looking for help, VerathonED will help provide default recommendations and guidance for curriculum options, programming scope and sequence, various supplemental resources, assessment testing, state-by-state regulatory considerations, and other best practices from the world of Pod Schooling.

VerathonED will begin curating and creating information and resources at verathoned.com which will also be made available through the Edefy App.

Feel free to email questions to [email protected]