10 Feb Founder: Jessica Shelley
Partnering with Parents in the Education Process
New learning platform DailiesPods matches students with teachers best suited to meet their needs
As a school teacher in a rural school district in Oregon, Jessica Shelley noticed that many parents were unsure how to best support their children’s academic success.
“I saw how hard it was to engage families in our classroom activities so that they could actually see what their kids were doing on a daily basis,” said Shelley, who is a mother of five. She knew that when parents were involved, children performed better academically.
So the 30-year-old came up with a way to bring students, teachers, and parents together.
In 2020, she created a learning platform called DailiesPods that matches students from kindergarten through high school with teachers best suited to meet their learning needs. “We work really hard on personalizing instruction for the kids,” she says. Learning takes place both in and beyond the virtual classroom. Parents receive regular updates on what their children are learning, as well as educational resources to work on with their children after they log off. The parental engagement piece is one of the biggest differentiators between DailiesPods and other learning platforms, Shelley says.
The equalizing power of technology
Students work with educators in small pods of four to eight students. Keeping classes intimate works best, Shelley says, because the pandemic showed that students were often overlooked in online classes teeming with 30 to 40 students. Parents can utilize DailiesPods for tutoring services, academic enrichment programs, or even homeschooling.
The learning platform also leverages the power of technology. Since its services are remote, it allows students of various socioeconomic backgrounds to tap the same resources. In the past, students might have access to a certain science instructor only if they lived in a particular zip code. With DailiesPods, they can access that instructor from anywhere and learn at their own pace. “It really is a leveler of the playing field,” Shelley says.
Shelley was the first teacher on the platform, which scored its first clients via word of mouth. Fast-forward to today: the platform has served more than 15,000 families and currently has a valuation of more than $5 million.
The biggest challenge for the company has been responding to changes in education policy and keeping up with educational trends. For example, during the pandemic, many universities dropped the requirement that students take standardized tests such as the SAT or ACT for admission. “We’re trying to be as responsive as we can to what families are needing without also being overwhelming with information because they’re getting it from so many different sources,” Shelley says.
Moving forward, Shelley would like the company to provide more support to schools while maintaining their focus on families. “We’re really thinking about how we can help teachers be more efficient and effective,” she says. “We’re walking alongside families in that parenting and education journey.” EW
