Yesterday I received the following comment, which I was very disturbed by.  

>>We have never met, but I do want to say that I was disappointed to hear from a number of potential homeschooling olim that were looking into Go North that you had told them NOT to homeschool when they make aliyah. I was told this by a few people, and am baffled as to why you did this.<<

Here was my response:

I would love to know what potential homeschooling families I told not to homeschool! I’m baffled myself to hear this! The only thing I would have done is share my personal reasons for doing what I did, but I’m as positive about homeschooling as always and have never discouraged anyone.  Actually, hardly any homeschoolers making aliyah have contacted me.  Is it possible they read my blog about my personal decisions for my family, and made an assumption based on that?  I speak to very, very few people about aliyah; I just don’t have the phone time.  Please share with me names because I try to be very clear when I communicate. Despite having done what I did (ie sent my kids to school when we moved here), it’s not what I would recommend for most people; I think homeschooling when a family first makes aliyah can make everything much easier for everyone. I’m as passionate about homeschooling as ever, and I’ve told a number of people who asked about our decision to send out kids to school that having kids in school makes it so clear how many advantages homeschooling offers! So you can see why I’m wondering how so many people can say that I told them not to homeschool.  Really, please let me know because I’d like to clear up the source of the misunderstanding – I don’t want my name associated with something that is opposition to my actual position.

Today I received a response:

>>As far as who told me that you discouraged them from homeschooling here, it was all a while back and I did not keep track of names. But it just seemed that at one point anyone NBN told to speak to me about homeschooling here had already heard from you that it was a bad idea. At least 3 people told me that, but I don’t remember their names or any real info about them. Unfortunately, they may have misunderstood you, but you seem to carry a lot of weight with Jewish homeschoolers, as you were one of the first, it seems.<<

I haven’t been in direct contact with even three homeschooling families about aliyah, but I’m taking this opportunity here to clear up my position publicly so there won’t be any further confusion. As I said in my response above, I have a strong feeling that people are confusing my personal choice and my sharing of my reasons for sending my kids to school with recommendations for others. This also ties into another question I wanted to answer, about if I regret having sent the kids to school when we got here.

I chose not to homeschool when we first got here because I felt very pressured.  We got here a week before the school year started and my kids were restless and unsettled, because that’s how you feel when you move to a new country!  They needed the feeling that I was on top of things and was getting a framework in place for them (or so I told myself), but I couldn’t wave my hands and create that framework in a week or two.  My concern wasn’t about my younger kids but mostly about my middle kids, then 12, 10 and 9.

Now, I had spent months thinking about this decision and had planned to homeschool everyone for at least the first year and then decide if sending them to school would be the right thing for them.  I wanted them to have a chance to adjust first to living here, get to know people and learn the language before being suddenly thrown into the Israeli school system.  Then we got here and the facts on the ground looked a lot different than what I was expecting.  I made a very quick – too quick – decision to override my many hours of reflection and put the kids in school to assuage my feelings of pressure.  A relevant factor in this decision was that I had just spent five intense months getting ready to make aliya, and had extended myself so much for so long that I felt worn out.  Of course there was only support for the decision to send to school.   I wrote about these decisions at the time.  I had so much to do when we moved here, and the pressure (that I was putting on myself) about getting the kids feeling good about homeschooling – ie so they wouldn’t feel like it was just our family all alone in our city – was pretty intense.

A long time homeschooler said to me several months ago that she didn’t understood why I felt so much urgency to make the decision about schooling right away.  Her point was valid; I could have taken my time to get used to being here and figured things out along the way.  But I didn’t and my reality was that I did feel a lot of urgency.  One of the strengths of my personality is that I do things quickly; one of the faults of my personality is that I do things quickly!  In this case it was a fault – I jumped too quickly to make a decision without giving myself the time to think things through that I usually invest on issues like this.

Am I sorry that I didn’t homeschool from the beginning?  Knowing how I was feeling then, no.  And I had a lot of good reasons; it wasn’t all fear and moving too fast.  It’s not easy to come into a new community, especially one as conservative as the one I’m part of, and to be visibly different.  Israelis in general seem to have a higher value for conformity than Americans.  When you’re choosing a different path than those around you, you need to feel confident about what you’re doing because you’re going to be questioned very intensely on a regular basis.  I was feeling a lot of self-doubt and pressure.  Time would have changed this picture, but I didn’t give myself time.

What I gained by putting the kids in school was time, time to think and make a decision about homeschooling from a position of strength.  Time to address my fears and think about how to fill in the gaps that concerned me.  Time for people to get to know our family and realize that we’re normal before doing something so different that they would have automatically written us off before knowing who we are.  Time to get our home furnished, to figure out where to do my shopping, for my husband to find work and have a wife who had more emotional energy to support him during the process.  Time for me to see my kids having difficulties in school that I would have blamed myself and homeschooling for if they were at home.   Time to get perspective and re-center myself, to clarify for myself what my values are and what actions would best support that.

So this experience was valuable for me, though I wouldn’t recommend it for other committed homeschoolers.  That’s the sketchy background of my decision.  Here’s where I’ll give a pointer from my hard earned experience: be very cautious about spontaneously overriding a decision that you’ve made with much thought and deliberation.

If you want to homeschool, there’s no reason to stop just because you’re moving to Israel.  There are some issues that you’ll want to address – the primary concern to me was acquisition of language and integration into the greater culture.  I think these bear thinking about for anyone moving here whose children won’t be in school, but I also think these points bear thinking about if your children are in school – these are both things I’ll share my thoughts on at a different time.

I’ve written loads about the many benefits in homeschooling, for the individual children and for the family.  I didn’t stop believing in this when I sent my kids to school.  There may be even more benefits in homeschooling your children through major life changes than when life is routine and stable.  Every change in family situation requires reassessment and finding ways to address the changes, but changes don’t automatically mean that homeschooling won’t continue to be successful.  It just means you need to be flexible and open to addressing new issues that may arise.

Avivah