As we set out to homeschool our daughters in a pod of families who, like us, would prioritize minimizing their potential exposure to COVID-19, with a teacher to help guide the learning, a daunting reality set in slowly.

As Josh Shirazi, one parent in our pod, said, we—and my wife in particular—would be taking on the roles of head of school, director of admissions, facilities manager, and, we would come to learn, director of curriculum.

Questions that at one point had been limited to the domain of my writing and advising would now become a central part of our life—and the core operations of our household.

But at a higher level, many of the questions we would be asking weren’t all that different from what parents and communities ought to be asking about their children’s education even in more normal times.