Looking for a School that Can Handle My Kids’ Identities

My children’s cousins in the Jabalia refugee camp are fasting for Ramadan. On the other side of our family, their cousins are doing Passover cleaning.

When I moved in with my partner Osama a decade ago, he told me something that took me years to decipher: “In Ramallah,” Osama said, “We have everything. But it’s hollow.”

In Ramallah, there’s a president and a prime minister but no sovereignty. In Ramallah, there are police officers protecting public safety, but they retreat when Israeli soldiers enter the city and arrest its residents. Ramallah has the chairperson of the Palestine Liberation Organization, but he’s busy running a local government via powers delegated by the occupier, who controls Palestine and prevents its liberation. Since the end of the First Intifada and the creation of the Palestinian Authority, the erosion in solidarity, integrity and standards in the political sphere has seeped into other critical institutions, including the Palestinian educational system, which has struggled for decades under conditions of occupation, fragmentation and travel restrictions.

We worried about that erosion of educational standards when the time came to choose a school for Forat and Adam. We are planning our return to the Ramallah area this summer, after nearly a year and a half of living in North Carolina. We have the privilege and the financial means to choose a private school, something we want for a variety of reasons, including because the government school day ends around noon, with no child care provisions that would allow us to work. The private schools offer an extended school day, co-education and an emphasis on teaching English, a language that feels especially necessary, given that we don’t know where our children will end up settling down. The private schools promised advanced pedagogical methods, excellent teachers, good value and critical thinking – but that’s not necessarily what parents in those schools reported when we called to ask.

I preferred a small school. I was afraid of bullying, a common practice in many schools and a source of concern for me, given our children’s mixed identities. We had heard disturbing stories about schools that touted values of mutual responsibility and community-building but in practice refrained from intervening in serious instances of bullying among the children. A small school would allow me to get to know the other parents and create a support network. After I published a post in this blog about talking to Forat in Hebrew in the Ramallah area, a reader posted a response asking how Forat feels about the Hebrew language and her identity as the daughter of an Israeli Jew and a Palestinian from a Muslim family. The truth is that I don’t know. We left the West Bank when Forat was in first grade. She’ll return as a third grader, more aware of her surroundings and joining a cohort of children who are also more aware of their surroundings – including the Israeli occupation.

We also had to resolve the issue of religious studies. The Palestinian Ministry of Education requires Muslims to learn Islam and Christians to learn Christianity, according to the religion of the father. That system considers our children to be Muslim.

“We can try to get an exemption from religious studies,” Osama said.

“No,” I said. “It would be good for them to learn Islam. It’s an important religion.”

Until we moved to North Carolina, Forat and Adam had never been exposed to formal religious education of any kind. In Raleigh, we send Adam to a Jewish preschool. Adam, the grandson of Palestinian refugees and also Jewish (Iraqi) refugees, runs around the house loudly and excitedly reciting, “Baruch, ata, Adonai!” He proudly shared with me the Friday ritual at his preschool: “We get challah and grape juice, and Rabbi Lisa makes Shabbat.” I’m happy about the Jewish education he’s getting here and wonder if he’ll remember it in the future.

Forat and Adam belong to so many worlds. As of last week, on one side of the family, their cousins in the Jabalia Refugee Camp are marking the start of the month of Ramadan, fasting during the day and partying at night. On the other side of the family, in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in New York State, their cousins are scrubbing the house for Passover.

In the summer, we’ll return to the West Bank. Adam and Forat will take another step toward crafting their identity and forging their way in the world. I hoped to find a school that will support them in their journey and appreciate the beauty and complexity of their identities.