“Hysterics doesn’t seem to be the way to go,” says Mrs. Robin Alberg, recalling a personal meltdown when one of her children acted up in the middle of South Dakota. It was so bad, says this Seattle-based home-schooling mother, that she even threatened to cut short their long-anticipated six-week summer road trip. In her talk at this May’s Torah Home Schooling Conference, in Baltimore, the humorous Mrs. Alberg recommended various constructive strategies for self-care to counteract the common, albeit happy, stresses of home schooling.
â—† â—† â—†
This was just one of many fascinating presentations at this year’s conference, the third one I have had the privilege of covering. Approximately 125 parents traveled from near and far to cull advice from fellow home schooling parents and learn methods from expert educators. As in the past, I walked away in awe of these extremely bright, down-to-earth, self-sacrificing, and dedicated parents from around the country and across the Orthodox spectrum.
The parent who traveled the farthest to attend the conference was Yael Aldrich. A former Marylander, she lives in Japan, where her husband, an associate professor of political science at Purdue University, is a Fulbright scholar at the University of Tokyo. There, he studies post-disaster recovery and other topics, and is also the rabbi for the Japanese branch of Purdue University’s outreach organization, PurJew. This is the family’s third stay in Tokyo, one of many exotic locales where Rabbi Dr. Daniel Aldrich has spent time in pursuit of his research.
Last year, the family lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, where Rabbi Dr. Aldrich was an American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow and also took a part-time pulpit at Am HaTorah in Bethesda. So, Mrs. Aldrich was a rebbetzin, but now, home schooling their four children is her full-time job. In addition, she runs PurJew, teaches occasional classes in basic Judaism and Hebrew, and owns and manages a 350-member-and-growing Yahoo support group for frum Jews interested in home schooling. The group is quite active, with between 200 and 300 messages each month about topics ranging from curriculum to discipline, emotional support, and advice. (See groups.yahoo.com/group/jewishorthodoxandhomeschooling.)
The parents divide the teaching tasks. Rabbi Dr. Aldrich is in charge of Mishnah and Gemara (although his wife pinch hits during his many travels abroad), Latin, and music (guitar and violin). He also helps check school work and takes over on days he is at home and his wife is in need of a break. In addition, he leads discussions during breakfast and dinner on the parsha and other topics.
“We are not the only Orthodox home schoolers, because there is no Jewish day school in Tokyo,” says Mrs. Aldrich. “The other two shomer Shabbat families also home school or partially home school their children. We became home schoolers during our second stay in Japan, in 2008. We had considered it before but were too nervous to try it in an established community. When we moved to Japan, we had the perfect opportunity. We enjoy it very much.”
Mrs. Aldrich, who earned two masters degrees from Brandeis University – in Jewish communal service and in management – uses material from Torah U’Mesorah’s website, chinuch.org, as well as various workbooks, textbooks, and self-created material. For instance, she has given her older children assignments like “make-a-quiz-for-a-parent,” in which they have to create a quiz for an adult, based on their assigned reading on any subject. “They have to think about what pieces of information are important enough to test me on,” says Mrs. Aldrich, “how to phrase a question correctly, and what the correct answer is (including tricky false answers to a multiple choice question).” The children write outlines or narrations from their readings in science, history, or literature, learning how to identify the main and supporting ideas in each paragraph.
A two-week field trip to China with the entire family is planned for the end of the school year.
When I asked Mrs. Aldrich about problems she faces in home schooling, she answered, “Well, aside from the usual issues of children being children and not listening or working on their assignments when I want them to, I don’t really feel like I have any real issues. Home schooling is an exciting way to enrich a Jewish family’s life,” Mrs. Aldrich concludes. “Judaism is a religion of doing, and when families home school, all of Judaism will benefit.”
When I expressed surprise at this sentiment, she added, “I firmly believe all of Judaism will benefit from home schooled children. They are being taught “al pi darko,” according to their needs, not the school’s or their community’s or religious society’s needs. These children will be able to learn, with their parents’ guidance – along with that of other caring individuals who take them under their wing through mentoring, apprentice opportunities, tutoring, and general socialization – how they can best serve G-d and their community without the need to be in lockstep with whatever society thinks is the appropriate thing to do.”
â—† â—† â—†
Baltimorean Yeshayahu Cox did not travel quite as far as Mrs. Aldrich to attend the conference. Home schooled himself until the eighth grade, he and his wife are continuing the tradition for another generation. The entrepreneur, who started a number of engineering businesses told me that he is grateful to live in America, where you can practice your religion, pray, and school how you see fit, unlike in Germany, where you can be put in jail for home schooling.
Mr. Cox’s wife Nechama is a dedicated teacher and reserves mornings for home schooling, in addition to other times, as needed. She also manages engineering programs. Mr. Cox plays an active home schooling role, but mostly on an “as-needed” basis. Still, he has taught all his post-kindergarten children to read in both English and Hebrew. In years past, he was also able to reserve a solid chunk of his mornings for home schooling. Now he relies much more on his wife and the boxed curriculum they use for secular studies. “Baltimore is the geographic nexus for home schooling,” says Mr. Cox. “There are dozens of homes schoolers here. In a place like Baltimore, it is easier to do your own thing. Some might not think it is normal to home school – but what is ‘normal’? The question is, what raises people to be able to achieve avodas Hashem?
“Even before I was married, I knew I wanted to home school,” explains Mr. Cox. “I love children, and, perhaps a little selfishly, I want to spend lots of time with mine. I see home schooling as both a mitzva d’oraisa and an opportunity to maximize the quality of education my children receive.”
In Mr. Cox’s opinion, the benefits of home schooling are many. “When children spend more time by themselves, they get to know themselves better, and become more secure in their own skin. They measure themselves not against other kids but against who they were yesterday. Also, home-schooled kids learn to teach themselves and to initiate their own growth. Most adults cannot do this! Additionally, home schooling allows parents to help their children see that every attribute a child has is neither good nor bad. There are no ‘gifted’ children. Every attribute a child has is actually pareve: they are merely different challenges and opportunities to grow.”
The Coxes use the formal Calvert School curriculum for secular studies. They use resources like the Lashon Hatorah, series to teach biblical Hebrew. Although they are strong advocates of home schooling, Mr. Cox admitted that “We find that once the kids reach high school age, they often need to be inspired by other adults besides their parents. This is not for their specific passions and interests (those continue unabated), but for more routine educational goals. It is important, for example, to write essays for a range of audiences to learn how best to make arguments for the world at large. It is part of growing up, and we have yet to really successfully home school high school-aged children.
“We are not freaks,” Mr. Cox concludes, “nor are we opposed to the choices that others make. We are merely parents and families who have made different choices, and for reasons that we think have everything to do with meeting our obligations to teach our children.”
â—† â—† â—†
Yael Resnick traveled to the conference from Sharon, Massachusetts, where her family is one of a handful of home schooling families. Together with the other towns in the Greater Boston area, there are enough such families to organize group field trips and gatherings.
Home schooling is not the only thing that keeps Mrs. Resnick busy. She publishes Natural Jewish Parenting magazine (currently online, soon to be print again as well), maintains the NJP online community (www.natural-jewish-parenting. net), and runs Room613.net with her husband Yosef. She also teaches math to sixth to ninth graders at The Binah School, in Sharon, teaches piano, is a private math and SAT tutor, composes choral music for a Jewish women’s choir, and is a freelance writer, editor, and graphic designer.
Mr. Resnick teaches the main schedule of classes. He is also a sofer STaM, a musician, and teaches teen and adult classes on a variety of subjects at local synagogues. His role in home schooling is a more informal one, teaching through conversation, stories, and music.
“My husband weighs in with his opinions and suggestions about our children’s education but entrusts me with the primary responsibility for making decisions and overseeing their learning, purchasing materials, organizing any outside activities, and coordinating with the other families, etc.,” says Mrs. Resnick.
Both of the Resnicks attended traditional schools all their lives. Mrs. Resnick went to Jewish day school through eighth grade, followed by public high school and Tufts University, where she got her degree in human factors engineering. Yosef went to public schools and then NYU, where he earned a degree in audio engineering.
“We’ve been home schooling for over 10 years, although we were drawn to the idea of home schooling and engaged in a kind of ‘pre-home schooling’ stage for several years before that,” says Mrs. Resnick. “When we actually jumped in and started to home school, it was for a combination of reasons, including a desire for a more flexible schedule and greater influence over our children and the content and style of their learning. We started out with our kids in school for limudei kodesh during the mornings, with home in the afternoon. As circumstances changed, we started home schooling full-time.”
How do the Resnicks come up with ideas to teach their children? “There are so many sources of inspiration for learning, including our own life experiences, our children’s interests, books we see in the library, videos we come across online, textbooks and workbooks, educational websites, nature, field trips, and performances. Everything we read or do is a jumping-off point for learning,” explains Mrs. Resnick. “The talk I gave at the conference was all about finding moments in your day where learning can happen naturally; it really is just an ‘antennas up’ mindset that you tune into.”
Mrs. Resnick offers one of many examples, which, she says, happen almost every day: “I was driving home from an errand with my eight-year-old daughter. She saw the word ‘vacuum’ on a sign along the road, and said, ‘I know how to spell vacuum,’ and she spelled it. Then I said, ‘Do you know what a vacuum is? Not a vacuum cleaner, a vacuum.’ She didn’t. So I started asking her questions, Socratic-style, and by the time we got home, she was an expert on the subject of vacuums. She immediately started quizzing my 16-year-old about why new jars of food pop when you open the lid, and whether he knew what is meant by the expression, ‘Nature abhors a vacuum.’ When we set out to do that errand, I did not have a lesson plan about vacuums in mind. Home schooling creates an attitude that allows these kinds of interactions to happen. Parents start to have their antennas up, but kids also start to expect that they can learn any time and anywhere.”
When I interviewed Mrs. Resnick, at the end of the conventional school year, she was working on certain projects a bit more informally: “With my eight-year-old, we have a lot of conversations,” she said. “She does many self-directed creative projects: making puppets or rubber-band guitars, writing poems or stories or letters to pen pals. We try to keep moving in her limudei kodesh workbooks. The big thing right now for her is to make progress in learning the davening, and to increase her fluency with reading Hebrew out loud. We’re also working on conversational Hebrew, using a curriculum I am creating called ‘Holistic Hebrew,’ which supports natural language development by centering learning around the child’s daily activities.
For my son in high school, it’s a push to finish as much as he can of his courses: some online, some workbook-based. He has a lot of flexibility in how he structures his time, but he has more expectations placed upon him as far as reaching certain goals by the end of the year so he can get high school credit in specific subjects.”
What challenges do the Resnicks face in home schooling? “The biggest challenge is balancing everyone’s needs, and making time for myself, for relaxation or to get my own work done,” says Mrs. Resnick. “Things work out, but some days are more successful than others. Home schooling means that parents and kids are spending a lot of time together every day, and although problems can definitely arise, overall it’s a good thing. There is more time and opportunity to have good interactions, and not just the stressful homework-and-bedtime negotiations that often end a typical day for school kids,” continues Mrs. Resnick. “There’s a more relaxed flow to the day, and a lot less pressure on everyone. There’s more time to have fun and do things. We can jump at the best moment to go for a bike ride or swing on the swings or go to the library. I have to say, although each day has its highlights and lowlights, home schooling makes for a really nice quality of life.
“Most people assume that home schooling means the parents have to teach everything to their kids,” concludes Mrs. Resnick, “but there are so many ways kids can learn, and so many people they can learn from. Grandparents or other relatives might want to get involved. There are classes of all kinds; my daughter has been taking a weekly nature science class at our local Audubon center for a few years. My other kids have taken art, dance, and piano. There’s time to pursue those kinds of interests, and often more money to pay for them because you’re not paying a day school tuition. You can also find local tutors or teachers of private classes in science and other academic subjects, or you can set up co-ops with other parents to teach each other’s kids different subjects. Another resource for home schoolers is online classes, and for Jewish families, sometimes outsourcing the limudei kodesh to a great online teacher can be a good choice. Many kids thrive in a program like Room613.net, which my husband Yosef teaches. He has a virtual classroom where he and his students can see and hear each other and interact and collaborate live. Many students feel very comfortable learning online and are very effective in that environment. And they have a lot of fun!”
â—† â—† â—†
Max and Rebecca Masinter, of Baltimore, have been home schooling since their oldest reached school age, five years ago; their children have never attended traditional school. Mrs. Masinter was home schooled from fifth through ninth grade, starting from the time her parents moved from Los Angeles to the smaller community of Seattle. Mr. Masinter is an attorney, and Mrs. Masinter works part-time, as a tutor for the ACT (college entrance exam) on evenings and Sundays.
“After ninth grade, I attended high school at Bais Yaakov of Denver,” says Mrs. Masinter. “Both home schooling and traditional school were wonderful experiences that I greatly enjoyed. Neither my siblings nor I had trouble transitioning to school.
“My husband likes to joke that he is the vaad hachinuch, but due to his long hours, I run the home schooling during the week,” explains Mrs. Masinter. “On Shabbos and Sunday, though, my husband spends significant time learning with our children, and that is definitely part of our home schooling lifestyle. Another very important role my husband (and any home schooling father) has is providing emotional support for his wife. Home schooling places very intensive (though rewarding) demands on the mother, and the father’s support and enthusiasm is invaluable.
“We choose to home school so that we can instill our children with a love of learning and growth, an understanding that learning is not something bound by certain hours or a certain building but an integral part of how a Jew lives,” continues Mrs. Masinter, whose children learn some subjects all together, and other subjects either alone or with their mother. “We want to customize their education to allow them to experience the natural joy and pleasure of learning. We are also very focused on home schooling’s benefits to our family as a unit. It is important to us that our children identify with and have strong relationships within our family.
“My children are the source of many ideas for what to learn and how we learn together,” continues Mrs. Masinter. “Often, a child will ask to learn something either individually or as a family or even as part of the broader home schooling community. For example, this year, our children wanted to coordinate a monthly chidon (contest) for local families. Each month we brainstormed potential topics (chagim, Jewish leaders in history, sefarim from Tanach and Torah shebe’al peh, brachos, etc.). We wrote a list of sample questions or an outline, which we shared in advance with participating families, and then came up with a game or method of running the chidon that allowed everyone to participate on his or her level.”
In answer to my query about any problems she faces in home schooling, she responded, “I don’t think I can identify any ‘problems’ that we have in home schooling. Just as in any other venture in life, there are challenges and moments where we have to evaluate our path and make changes, if necessary, but those aren’t problems, just signs that we are engaged in the process of living and growing!”â—†
© Margie Pensak-2013
