A Sister For DD

Yes DD is getting a sister. A big sister.

I had a meeting at the school with the headmistress, DD's class teacher and the school counselor, to see how we could help DD with her Hebrew. Having practised reading at home since December and now that we are learning for the spelling tests (which we did as soon as I knew that there were word lists given out), the teacher has changed her mind about assessments for learning difficulties and agrees with me that it's lack of exposure to the Hebrew language that is holding her back.

I also may have mentioned to her that I cannot afford a tutor for extra Hebrew lessons. Because of that and me being a single mother, there were a few subtle questions about our financial situation. I wasn't offended and answered truthfully that although I only just make enough money to reach the end of the month, we do live in our own apartment so we won't be out on the streets and we have enough to eat. (I eat more than enough actually but that's another issue.)

However, before they realized that I own my apartment and teach at college level, the school counselor had already nominated us for a big sister. The Big Brother Big Sister network is an international organisation essentially to give children at risk an adult other than their parents to mentor them through school.

If you look at the American Big Brother Big Sister website you'll see that it's all about helping the children graduate high school, not drop out of school and avoid falling into drug and alcohol abuse. I don't care as long as our big sister speaks Hebrew. And of course I'm all for graduating, not dropping out of school, etc...

I had to call the co-ordinator for Jerusalem. When I asked her if she was the co-ordinator for the whole of Jerusalem, she firmly informed me that she was the social worker and that she'd like to make a home visit before assigning us a big sister. Ho hum. Now we have a social worker.

So I spent the day of the home visit cleaning the house and was considering whether to start baking bread and putting classical music on to softly play in the background, when my mother skyped us from London. Then the Social Worker arrived just in time to see three generations of happy family connecting across the continents. I couldn't have planned it better.

I was expecting her to snoop around a bit. But it wasn't like that at all. Turns out she's a friend of my neighbour and actually she just wanted to discuss the programme. I think I got confused by all the social sevices horror stories in the Mail Online.

So she's coming back on Monday with our big sister who will be spending a couple of hours a week with DD to speak and play with her in Hebrew. She might help us with the homework or go with DD to the park. They get tickets for shows and concerts sometimes for the children to go to with their Bigs.

Our big sister is a first year student on a four year course in Jerusalem. If everything goes well we could have her in the family for the next four years. Or longer. We're excited about it. I'll let you know how it goes.