At the beginning of last year, I decieded to homeschool dd14 despite her opposition.  I wrote about why I did that then, and despite her original unwillingness, it’s been a very positive experience.

My goal in homeschooling her was to give her a chance to reclaim herself after two very draining years in the Israeli school system.  Making aliyah can be really rough on a person’s self-identity and self-image and the older a child is when they move here, the harder this is.  I hoped she would recover the love of learning that is inherent to everyone though often supressed, to become motivated and self-directed in her learning, to realize that if there’s something she wants to learn, she has the ability to learn it.  I wanted her to discover and recognize strengths and abilities that were dormant and unexplored when in school.

It’s been a very gratifying period as she has blossomed in all of these areas and more.  At the beginning of this year, I told her that I was turning all control over her academics to her – whatever she wants to do is fine with me; if she needs help with something she can ask me and I’ll do what I can to support her.  And that’s what she’s done, with plenty of time left to explore her interests.

My main regret about homeschooling her is that living where I do with the constraints that I have, homeschooling isn’t the expansive experience for her that I’d like it to be.  I’ve always enjoyed feeling connected and having my kids connected in different ways outside of our family to the larger community but that has been very challenged where I am and there’s very little I can do to change this.

Last year we talked about if she’d be interested in going to high school when the time came and at that point she was adamantly against it. This year, however, she’s expressed an interest in attending.  Knowing that high schools are likely to be uncomfortable with a girl from a homeschool background (it’s a much less common here than in the US)  I’ve been grateful for my relationship with the administration of the local high school where my older two daughters attended.  They were very impressed with our girls (one teacher/principal told me that in all her years of teaching teen girls she rarely saw girls like them and it was clear to her that it was a result of homeschooling) and this gave me reassurance that she would be accepted without reservations.

An Israeli friend has been encouraging me to look into a high school in a different city where her daughter commutes daily.  I decided against that school but then someone else recommended a different school that she thought would be good for dd14.  After hearing about it, it did sound like it could be a good fit.  My main concern was that the as soon as they heard she was homeschooled, she would be refused an entrance interview.

I called the principal and had a nice chat with her and then we began scheduling an interview for dd14.  She told me to bring in her report cards for last year when we came for the interview and at this point, I explained that dd is homeschooled.  This is when how you present yourself and what you do makes a very big difference, but I knew that regardless of how I came across, I’m dealing with a conservative school system and school policies can be very rigid.

I told her a bit about homeschooling and dd.  She told me the school has a high academic level and wanted to know if dd could academically keep up.  I assured her that dd is a bright and motivated learner, and the principal agreed to meet her.  I was relieved to have gotten past this potential obstacle.

Dd and I went together to the interview and the principal clearly thought well of her so now it’s on to the next part of the acceptance process – the entrance exams.  The exams will be sometime after Chanukah for all the incoming ninth graders, and acceptance will be based on the results of the testing.

As I told dd, I did my part to get her an interview, now it’s her job to do well on the entrance exam!

I asked what the areas the tests would be covering and the principal told us it will be English, math, Jewish knowledge (need to recognize brief biblical quotes and be able to say who said it to whom and in what context) and Hebrew grammar.  The principal said she was confident that dd would do well on math and English which are the most heavily weighted portions of the test, and they’ll take into account that she’s not a native Hebrew speaker when grading the other two portions.  Dd14’s Hebrew isn’t fluent yet and I appreciated that the principal accepted this as reasonable for someone her age moving to Israel when she did, rather than being judgmental about it.

Dd14 asked me to begin learning Hebrew grammar systematically with her today, so I pulled out a text that dd18 used when she started school here and we worked through the first lesson and plan to continue learning this together.  Ds15 (tenth grade) gave her his math text from last year if she wants to use that to prepare for the exam.  Her math skills are strong so this is to be sure she’s familiar with the Hebrew math vocabulary.

She was a bit nervous about the Jewish knowledge portion- I asked the principal for a sample of the quotes and due to their brevity they were quite difficult – despite being able to translate them all I only recognized two out of ten.  But I told dd not to worry about it, to keep learning chumash on the schedule she’s on.  I want her to feel prepared for the test but at the same time, I have a longer term view on chumash than an entrance test; she’s acquiring solid textual skills in addition to knowledge of content and this is what’s most important.

High school will be a big change for dd but this is part of what homeschooling is about; raising your kids to know what they want and helping them acquire the skills they need to be successful doing it.

Avivah