Real Life Lessons

Growing up as one of three kids in a Chabad-leaning family on a 72-acre maple syrup farm in Vermont, Tova always knew she wanted to homeschool. “Farm chores were definitely part of growing up,” Tova recalls fondly. “We would collect sap and boil it into maple syrup, feed the horses, clean out the chicken coop, and collect fresh eggs. I attended a small Lubavitch school that did an amazing job of educating each child according to their way. I was also home for half a year in high school and it allowed me to complete two years of requirements in six months. That experience taught me how much time home education frees up for the fun things in life.”

When Tova was dating her future husband, Don, she told him that she intended to homeschool and he was completely on board. “He was homeschooled himself for many years,” Tova tells me. “His mother had initially sent her boys to typical schools, but it just wasn’t a good fit. The schools were very cookie-cutter, and her kids didn’t fit the mold.”

Today, Don is very hands-on with his children’s chinuch. “He has a property management and pest-control business, and he always tries to include the kids in his work projects,” Tova explains. “They help him with landscaping — planting trees, laying down mulch. Whenever Don has to test the chlorine in our pool, he has the kids measure PH and chlorine levels, a real-life chemistry lesson.”

When Don wanted to build a porch on the house, he asked the kids if they wanted to help. “Tillie was his only volunteer,” Tova says with a laugh. “She’s my outdoorsy one and she tends to be his partner in crime in all his construction projects.” After helping her father with the measurements, Tillie learned how to shop for what they needed at Home Depot. She unloaded the beams from the car, and under Don’s supervision she drilled, hammered, and sawed.

“In our house, we don’t say to our kids, ‘You can’t use real tools,’ ” Tova says. “We say, ‘Let’s teach you how to use them properly.’ Obviously, we keep them safe, but we don’t believe in sheltering them and being totally risk averse.”

Learning how to be a self-sufficient adult is a big part of the Brody’s unofficial curriculum. “I’ll give the kids the challenge of figuring out a meal from start to finish,” Tova says. “They’ll do everything — create a shopping list, pick out the groceries, pay at checkout, and cook the meal. I’ll sometimes wait outside the grocery stores to give the girls a chance to shop without me there. They’re learning everything it takes to run a household.

“We’re also passionate about making sure our kids are financially literate,” Tova adds, “so we give the kids an allowance for doing things above and beyond their chores, such as babysitting a certain number of times, or clearing the yard of sticks and rocks. We give them their allowance in the form of a paycheck, which they receive every other week. The kids help us do the math of deducting taxes and maaser from their paychecks. At the end of the summer, the kids vote on what we should do with their tax money, so they learn about representative government. They also get to decide where they want their maaser to go. They’re learning about the importance of tzedakah, and how to choose a charity that’s meaningful to them.”

Many people associate learning with a classroom, but for the Brodys, learning is simply how you live. “If my kids ask me a question, and I don’t know the answer, I educate myself about it. I’m constantly learning. Toby wanted to learn the violin, but I had never touched a string instrument before, so I told her, ‘We’ll learn it together.’ That said, if there’s something I can’t teach, I’ll take my kids to people who can teach them.”

For kodesh studies, for example, the older girls are enrolled in Jewish Online School, a homeschooling program that runs four days a week for two hours a day (see sidebar for more). “The girls love it. They’re learning Chumash, Navi, Halachah, Parshah. It’s very project-based —Toby is currently making a comic strip of Melachim because that’s how she learns best. She loves graphic design and she’s learning Navi in a way that resonates with her. The teachers are amazing.”

Home Education Not Homeschool

Living in Baltimore, there are plenty of Torah day schools to choose from, but for the Brodys, homeschool is an active choice. Tova actually prefers the term “home education” because, as she points out, she’s not just doing school at home, she’s educating, and that has a very different look and feel from school.

“Home educating allows for the family unit to be the focal point of childhood. The Jewish home is the main base and with that, family values are the priority,” Tova explains. “Schools don’t leave a lot of time for your child to be in the family unit. Even at the best schools, children spend more time with their teachers than their family.”

As a “home educating” mother, Tova takes advantages of opportunities to pass down and involve her children in what’s important to her: midwifery and political advocacy. Tova is a trained homebirth midwife with her own private practice. “Juggling both jobs can be a challenge,” Tova admits, “but I own my own practice, so I try to schedule all my patients for Sunday and keep my practice low-volume.” When she’s not busy with that, she’s actively involved in local government.

“I’m meeting with my lobbyist this week and going down to Annapolis in a month to advocate for midwifery bills and increased maternal healthcare safety. Of course, I’ll bring my kids with me. They come with me to Annapolis every year. I want my children to get involved in local government and understand the power of voicing concerns to your elected officials.”

Chesed and volunteerism isn’t something the Brodys just talk about; it’s a value they try to integrate into their everyday life. “Don has coordinated street cleanups with the county where they pick up garbage on streets or hiking trails. We tell the kids, ‘Wherever you go, bring a plastic bag and collect some trash. Let’s try to leave every place a little nicer than we found it.’”

The Brody kids regularly visit assisted living and nursing homes where they play the violin, sing, and play piano for the elderly. “Toby volunteers at the Chabad House, helping with events, and my kids help the rebbetzin in the kitchen every Shabbos to set up the kiddush,” Tova adds.

The Brodys follow a homeschooling method called “unschooling,” a term coined by educator John Holt in the 1970s. The belief behind unschooling is that children are naturally curious, and they learn best when they’re interested in a topic. Children decide what they want to learn, how they want to learn it, and at what pace. The focus is on the child’s interests and learning style.

“The advantage of home education is that it allows children to learn through play and experience,” Tova explains. “Kids get to run around in the fresh air. They get to learn what they’re passionate about. They get to learn at their own pace. If a child excels at math and needs more time and support in reading, it gives them the space to be where they are and get extra support where they need it.”

Beyond the benefits of homeschool, Tova is also trying to protect her kids from the pitfalls of typical school. “I have no judgment toward people who choose to send their kids to mainstream yeshivahs, but there are potential flaws in the system. Sometimes, you hear of a school diagnosing a normal, active child with ADHD and putting them on medication because the school can’t handle a kid who needs to move around a bit more. Other times, there are issues with bullying, or toxic values that creep in from social media or iPhones. Sometimes, your child has a mediocre or subpar teacher — that’s ten months of their formative childhood with a teacher who may not be good for them.”

Tova sees homeschooling as a natural extension of her midwife philosophy. “Professionally, my entire philosophy is based on informed consent. In the medical community, you’ll walk into a doctor’s office at twenty-eight weeks pregnant and they’ll say something like, ‘We’re going to be doing a gestational diabetes test today. Drink this glucola drink and we’ll test your blood sugar.’ As a midwife, I would say, ‘Typically at twenty-eight weeks, we test for gestational diabetes. These are the risks of the test, these are the benefits, and these are the alternatives. How do you feel about it?’ I try to raise my children the same way. I want them to feel as if they’re making informed choices about their education.”

What if her children one day choose to mainstream into regular frum schools? “I would be fine with that,” says Tova. “In fact, I’m planning to take Toby to tour a few girl’s high schools in the Baltimore area to see if she would be interested in attending. Right now, she’s leaning against it because she sees the sheer amount of time that school takes up. What the kids appreciate about homeschooling is the flexibility, and that it allows them to prioritize their hobbies. Toby has expressed interest in enrolling in online college classes starting in  tenth or  eleventh grade, and graduating high school with an associate’s degree at the same time. I expect that the girls will go to some kind of seminary after high school. I’d be happy if they want to go to college, but I don’t feel it’s a requirement to being successful in life.”

What about more in-depth yeshivah learning for her son? “He’s only three right now,” Tova says, “so it’s a while away, but my husband and I have thought about enrolling him in yeshivah at nine or ten so he can learn Gemara with other boys.”

It Takes a Village

Between homeschooling all her kids and running a private practice, how exactly does Tova have time to pull off supper every night, wash the laundry, shop, run the home, make Shabbos, and somehow also prepare for Pesach?

The short answer: With help. Lots of it.

First, there’s Tova’s mother-in-law, who lives in an attached apartment. “Until a few decades ago, it was normal for children to be raised in a multigenerational culture. For me, raising children this way is just how it was meant to be. According to the Torah, there’s so much mesorah that’s passed down from generation to generation. My mother-in-law bakes challah every week, and the kids go down and help her. She also teaches sewing — they’re learning how to make clothing, hats, bags, quilts. They’re getting an opportunity to learn from the matriarch of the family.”

Tova’s parents also live nearby. “My mother ran a veterinary pharmaceutical company and worked in animal hospitals for many years, so she helps the girls foster kittens. My girls have fostered around forty kittens, nursing them back to health, and finding homes for them.” Tova’s father is a rabbi, attorney, and musician. Both her parents board horses at a stable, and her father gives the kids horseback riding lessons.

Who watches the kids when Tova needs to rush out to deliver a baby? “We have a sitter who is like another Brody sister in our family,” Tova shares. “I can also call my mother or mother-in-law, and baruch Hashem there are so many other incredible sisters-in-law and friends and neighbors who offer to swoop in whenever I need.”

They don’t just help with babysitting. Last year, Tova gave birth on Taanis Esther, so she had to prepare for Pesach with a newborn and five kids at home. Tova’s sister-in-law sent over her four teenage nieces to help her clean.

With six kids at home now, Tova keeps her expectations realistic. “We’re not a toothpick-to-the-floorboards family,” she explains, “and I don’t clean months in advance because I know at some point my kids will bring in bagels, pretzels, and pizza. We try to clean a few weeks before Pesach and, after that, we only buy kitniyos, not chametz gamur, before we do our final clean. Everyone in the family has a job and helps.

“While I know of homeschool families who live on farms in the middle of nowhere, for me, as an extroverted person, being part of a community is what makes it enjoyable,” Tova says. One night a year, toward the end of August, 20 homeschooling mothers with school-age kids from five to 18 get together for “homeschooling mother planning night” to create the homeschooling schedule for the upcoming year.

“We sit down for hours and decide what classes we’re going to offer, and which mothers are going to teach what. One year I offered an art class. Another year, a movement class. Whatever talents or knowledge we have, we offer to teach.”

In addition to the homeschool co-op classes, there are weekly field trips to parks, museums, roller skating rinks, and more for the greater Jewish homeschooling community. “We always hold events around chagim,” Tova adds. “The girls usually get together every year to put on a Purim play. One homeschool mother holds a Tishrei fair in her basement. This year, I had the kids making focaccia bread in the shape of a lulav and esrog at my table, one mother made Succah decorations at her table, while another mother was teaching about the Yom Kippur machzor.”

Baltimore has a sizeable frum homeschool community — Tova knows of a hundred families in her homeschooling network — and the families are committed to making homeschooling a great experience for their kids. “We organized the girls’ home education class under an umbrella called Bnos Rena to honor the memory of our dear friend, Rena Baron a”h, a fellow homeschool mother who tragically lost her years-long battle to cancer this past summer,” Tova shares. “One of the mothers designed a Bnos Rena logo and the girls all have school sweatshirts. It’s important for them to have that cohesive feel of belonging that kids often get from being part of a traditional school.”

Shifting Expectations

How exactly does Tova handle having her kids around 24-7? To start, she’s a big believer in giving kids chores and responsibilities and encouraging them to be independent. So her kids aren’t hanging on her all day. The older girls help with laundry, grocery shopping, meal prep, and baby care. Even her six-year-old and nine-year-old make themselves lunch every day.

“When I feel I need to reset, I put myself in a time-out,” says Tova. “It’s okay for kids to be bored and it’s not my job to entertain them, so sometimes I say, ‘Everyone go outside and play for a bit.’ Or I let the kids know that I’m going to my room, and I want to be left alone for fifteen minutes.”

Tova also prioritizes self-care. “I make sure to do things that fill my cup. My husband and I have a date night once a week. Once a month, I go out to a book club with my friends. Occasionally, I’ll get a massage or read a book, and I absolutely love thrifting. Going to a thrift store, even with my kids, is self-care for me.”

Even though Tova’s educational style is very child-led, there are mornings when Tova must pull off the kids’ blankets and prod them downstairs to learn. Sometimes the kids aren’t in the mood to learn, but the lessons are generally short, and Tova says it really helps to set expectations. “For the next thirty minutes, we’ll be doing math and then you can do something you’re interested in,” Tova will tell them.

Some days, the kids are cranky, but “I’d rather they have a bad day at home than unload on teachers in a school setting,” Tova says. She’s a big believer in the power of baths to calm kids. Even if it’s in the middle of the day, Tova sometimes draws a bath with Epsom salt, essential oils, and scented candles. “It’s a great sensory experience. And it’s very detoxing. In general, I believe that physical or sensory experiences can help soothe a child who’s feeling out of sorts.”

Homeschooling, says Tova, changes your perspective about what a home is supposed to be. “My friend, who just joined the homeschooling co-op, said something that resonated with me: ‘When you commit to home education,’ she told me, ‘your expectations shift. Your house might not look the way it did when you sent your kids to school. It might not be the same level of clean or quiet that it was when your kids were gone eight hours a day. But eventually, you realize that it’s okay. You don’t need to accept society’s standard of what your home should look like.’ ”

Of all her homeschooling responsibilities, which is the most taxing? “There are like four thousand carpools every day,” Tova jokes. “I have to drop off one kid at nine fifteen, one at ten, pick up one at ten forty-five, pick up another at eleven, then drop off another one at twelve. It’s stressful having to leave the house fifty times a day, but my homeschool neighbor and I made a pact that this year we’re going to approach carpools with no stress, and just surrender.

“My biggest parenting hack,” Tova adds, “is to just live in the moment and not worry. I try to not worry about my kids when I’m with a client, and not worry about my clients when I’m with my kids. My goal, and the thing I work on the hardest, is just to live in the present and give one hundred percent of myself to whatever it is that I’m doing at the moment.”

A Day in the Life

By 12 p.m., Tippy, Shifra, and the other six- to nine-year-olds in their co-op are done with their lessons. The other mothers pick up their children, and Tova’s kids come upstairs. Tova gives them a mini-reading lesson from a workbook and then they have some free play time before lunch.

“There are always other homeschooling friends and cousins over,” Tova says. “We call them bonus kids. While they’re here, they become part of the family, even doing chores. I love having all these kids around, but we always send them home for dinner because that’s family-only time.”

For lunch, the girls make homemade vegetable soup from the vegetables they picked from their garden. “We grow pretty much everything,” Tova says. “Zucchini, potatoes, corn, tomatoes, peas, watermelon, pumpkins, radishes, beets, and carrots. My mother-in-law guides the kids, and the kids do a lot of the planting. Whenever the kids play in the backyard, they come inside with their pockets full of fresh-picked produce. They’ll say, ‘I want pesto pasta for lunch,’ so they’ll go outside and strip all the basil plants. My kitchen is a constant bustling restaurant for the kids,” Tova jokes. “They’re always hungry. The food budget blows through the money you save on tuition.”

After lunch, Tippy and Shifra spend most of the day playing outside, getting a lot of fresh air and exercise, while the older girls often do more schoolwork. “Toby is studying Spanish online, and Tillie is taking a class called Weird, Smelly, Sticky Science,” Tova says with a laugh. “It’s from a homeschooling website called Outschool, and each week they have a different project. One week they discover why skunks smell bad, another week they’ll study ear wax.” In addition to taking science, music, and horseback riding, Tillie is also an assistant teacher at Bas Melech, a local frum girls’ gymnastics and dance gym.

Dinner prep is at 5 p.m. and everyone helps. “The younger kids tidy up, while the older girls might cook, or help with the baby,” Tova explains. “During dinner, we do goal setting and celebrating our accomplishments. Toby says she wants to finish reading a series of books by next week. Tillie wants to learn how to canter on her horse. Tippie wants a job as a mother’s helper. Then we talk about all the ways we succeeded at our goals in the past week and celebrate them.

“So much of our feedback to our children is about what they need to work on — ‘Why isn’t your room clean? Why are your shoes in the hall?’ — so I think it’s so important to pick one accomplishment that you recognize them for every day. Practicing gratitude is a huge part of our life, but also our parenting, and each day we look for things to praise them for, even if it’s just a quick, ‘Thank you for putting your shoes where they belong.’

“Perhaps for some people, the responsibility of educating one’s own children might be too daunting,” Tova continues. “But I feel I was given an incredible privilege as my kids’ mother to teach them. In today’s society, we regularly hand control over to people — whether it’s to the government to educate our children, or to doctors to make our medical decisions for us. If our kids are struggling academically, socially, or emotionally, we blame the school, but if we realize that we are the ones ultimately responsible for our children’s chinuch, then we have the power to change it,” Tova reflects. “And that’s very empowering.”

THE JEWISH DAY SCHOOL EXPERIENCE — ONLINE

Many homeschoolers rely on web-based Torah learning programs, such as the Jewish Online School. Principal Chanie Hertzel shares the story of her institution.

“W

hen the Jewish Online School (JOS) opened their digital doors in 2010, there were maybe 50 kids. Now we have over 400. Covid changed everything.

Before the pandemic, people didn’t necessarily realize that there were alternative methods of education. They thought this is the way it is, and that’s it. Then Covid hit, and suddenly parents were open to trying out something different.

With the tremendous growth of the school in 2020, JOS brought me in as school principal. I have 20 years of experience in teaching, and I was excited to meet the unique challenges of providing the highest caliber Jewish education in a purely digital platform.

Just some background history: Before Jewish Online School, there was Shluchim Online School, a school for children of Lubavitcher shluchim, who are often living in remote locations without access to a yeshivah. Bassie Shemtov, the director, sometimes received calls from parents not involved in shlichus, asking if there were any Jewish online schools available for their children. That’s when she realized there was a need for a top-notch online Jewish school open to any Jewish child, living anywhere in the world.

There are many Jewish kids around the globe, and there are all sorts of reasons traditional school might not work for them. Some kids might be a little behind and need a slower pace. Other kids might be gifted and need a faster one. Sometimes kids are bullied in school and need a reprieve from daily social or emotional stress. Each child in our school has a unique story about what brought them to us.

There was a Lakewood family, for example, who joined for a year because the father received a scholarship for a medical fellowship in a city where there was no Jewish community. We have lots of Jewish families in the military whose fathers serve as chaplains. There are also frum families who chose online school because they need to travel regularly for business reasons.

Sometimes people come to us because they’re becoming frum. We got a call last year from a rabbi in Maine. A family in his community was getting closer to Yiddishkeit and they wanted something more than just once-a-week Hebrew school for their kids. The Rabbi was nervous to suggest Jewish Online School because he thought it might be too much for them. But the kids decided to join and they loved it. Their mother said to us, ‘We never knew there was so much to learn!’ They ended up becoming fully frum and moving to a Jewish neighborhood, but they kept the kids in our school because it was such a good fit for them.

Sometimes, we get families who are traditional or shomer Shabbos. The parents send their kids to public school due to the high cost of private Jewish day schools, but they want their kids to have a Jewish education — to know how to say a devar Torah at the Shabbos table, or learn Mishnah. So they send their kids to us after a day of public school.

All our morahs and rebbis are in it for the kedushah. Many times they work two jobs, at a local frum school and at our online school. We have teachers from all over the world. They do it because they love the students and they want to teach them Torah and give it over to the next generation.

Our students aren’t just watching a screen, they’re getting real hands-on experience. We do challah bakes; we had a program for Shivah Asar B’Tammuz on building the Beis Hamikdash; we have book readings. We design exciting activities so our students can learn while they’re socializing and making friends.

Our school spans the globe. There are children in California logging on at 6 a.m. and children in Europe logging on at 5:30 p.m., but they’re learning the same Torah. It’s all live, on Zoom, with separate classes for boys and girls. There are no prerecorded classes, so they get to see each other and really interact. We always open the class early, and give the kids a recess, so they can socialize and form real friendships online. This past year, we had a bunch of girls from Baltimore and California fly to Texas to stay for a week with friends from JSO. They’re getting the true Jewish Day School experience and making friendships that span the globe.”

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 936)