אם אתם מעדיפים לקרוא את הפוסט הזה בעברית – הנה הלינק

If you would rather reading this post in Hebrew – here is the link

(Before you start reading – if you are wondering who is writing this post, it is definitely not Kfir, as he would cross everything out and say “Mom, your English is the worst!” and start it all over…)

****************************************************************************************************

A year ago, Kfir and the whole family  began a process of searching for high schools for Kfir.

For those who do not know, high school starts in the United States in the ninth grade, and most children go to the high school closest to where they live. Some children choose to go to certain schools because of sports, academics, interest programs, social life, etc’. Usually high schools that have special programs are private high schools that cost a lot of money, but there are some public high schools who do a great job in differentiating themselves from other schools.

 

At Helios (the school all of our kids attend now, which is a K-8 school), there is a teacher named Mike (he is Yoav's humanities teacher). One of Mike's roles is to be a high school counselor. Mike built a process of starting in January of seventh grade, and ending with choosing the right high school for your child by the end of eighth grade. In this process, Mike leads the children and parents to understanding what each child's needs and wants are, and which schools will suit him or her. It's a long process that includes long lectures on Mike's part (he is doing a great job in explaining the whole process. And the reasons behind everything ….), through several processes individual and family processes to identify the needs and wants of the children and parents, initial schools list, tracking schools, selection of a limited number of schools and then submission of application for those schools (and much more will be said about this later …).

Mike's recommendation would not necessarily be to go to a private school. If the public school at your place of residence meets the needs and desires expressed by the child and parents, Mike's recommendation would be to go to the local school. In our case, we think our local school (Fremont) is a great option for Kfir, as he can progress there academically, there will be a lot of kids he will be happy to connect with, and their baseball team is desperate for players who love the game 🙂

But, at least in our case, Kfir flipped through the summer over sites of about 30 more schools that Mike suggested. At the end of the summer he reduced the list to 9 schools, which were immediately reduced to 5 schools. Then, and only then began the agonizing process of submitting application forms.

 

Oh My God!!!! (and I am not saying this in a nice way!)

Apart from the fact that we had to fill the same basic information (name, residence, previous schools, family, hobbies, achievements, interests, etc. etc. etc.) in 5 different systems, and apart from the fact that Kfir and we had to go through interviews and meetings in 5 Different schools, and apart from the fact that Mike and Kfir’s teachers had to fill out assessments about Kfir in five different systems (and all the other kids in his class with all the schools they applied to …) and besides the fact that we had to pay enrollment fees to 5 different schools (But I must admit that the registration fee is low $ 50- $ 100 per school, unlike the International School in Even Yehuda – read the comment at the end* …).

Aside from all these things, we also had to answer questions. A lot of questions. A lot of questions, and these are not 'yes' or 'no' questions, but long questions that require between 200 and 1000 words. And it's not just a matter of the length of the answer, but what the answer is (or rather, the question’s level of complexity, and how deep you have to reach within yourself to answer it …).

Even though Mike did a great job in explaining the whole process to us, and held our hand throughout the whole process and helped us a lot – the process still overwhelmed us. And after we went through it once, I'm not sure I want to go through it again with any of the children towards high school or even towards college (they should go to Ben Gurion University – where they do not ask you to answer thoughtful questions, they only look at your highschool grades …)

Anyway, after 4-5 months that this process has been leaching on our souls while we're working on the application one by one at our own pace (meaning TOO SLOW), today we finally submitted the last part for the last school!!!

Now I can honestly say, that even though it was a process that taught us and Kfir a lot about himself and ourselves and how we see him and how he sees himself, and how his and our perceptions of life is perceived by all of us, and although Kfir has matured greatly in this process and when he applies to college he will do so with his both hands tied behind his back – despite all this I must say it was TERRIBLE and HORRIBLE process and the person who invented it was probably thinking of new ways to represent the concept of "Hell on Earth" 🙂

 

But, so that all this hard work would not be lost, I am posting what Kfir wrote and what we wrote. I recommend ignoring everything we wrote (pure nonsense), and reading everything Kfir wrote because it is stunning (albeit in English, but absolutely stunning).

Enjoy !

***************************************************************************************************

Kfir's Essays and creations 

My Profile Multimedia Creation

My Page (or "What would you make — edible or otherwise — with squash, tomatoes and strawberries?")

What do you look for in a friend?

 If you could learn any new skill, what would it be and why?

Explain an event or activity that has impacted your life and or your way of thinking

Describe an extracurricular achievement

Choose three words that best describe you as a person

What books have you most enjoyed in the past year and why

**************************************************************************************************

 Someone drew my attention to the website of the International School in Even Yehuda.  I was in absolute in shock when I saw the following sentence

For new students, a one-time registration fee of 20,000 NIS per child in addition to tuition is assessed (this is non-refundable).

And this sentence, made my jaw drop

Application Deposit 10,000 NIS, paid prior to the admission screening appointment, which will be deducted from the tuition.

 

And these the above two sentences have almost nothing to do with the yearly tuition:

High School Annual Total: NIS 127,500

This is a total MADNESS!