How one homeschooling family turned the world into their classroom
IT’S10 a.m. on a Tuesday and Tova Brody is sitting in the living room with her two oldest daughters giving them a homeschool writing lesson.
“Would this be an example of a metaphor?” asks Toby, age 13. She’s analyzing the lyrics to her favorite Jewish song — Moshe Yess’s “Dollar Bill” — and identifying all the elements of figurative language she can find in it.
“Yes! This is a perfect example!” Tova tells her daughter. “Do you see any others?”
Eleven-year-old Tillie is working on a “persuasive writing” assignment. “How do you spell ‘congressman’?” she asks. She’s writing a letter to her local congressman in Baltimore, Maryland, to campaign for a sidewalk on the Brodys’ street. They live on a main road, so they want sidewalks to make walking in the neighborhood safer. Tillie and her siblings have gone door to door with clipboards, asking their neighbors to sign a petition for more sidewalks, and they created an email blast campaign to their delegates, senators, and the Maryland Transportation Authority. So far, they’ve managed to get more sidewalks in their neighborhood, but there still isn’t one on their block. Tillie’s hoping to change that with her letter.
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