I skipped making an entry yesterday. Bikram left me very tired as it did today too. I am always working on opening up my arthritic hip more and changing my spinal alignment. If I am successful, my body doesn’t want to be pushed anymore. I limit how much of the class I do after such I get that signal. Yesterday, I was exhausted and napped. Today, I fell asleep in class. Heather woke me up because the 9: 30 hot Pilates class was about to start. I had had a significant movement in my hip and wasn’t sure I could get up. Heather stood by me, ready to haul me to my feet, but I could get up myself.
Yesterday, working on the plumbago (love the word) required a ladder so I could reach the high growing branches. The area I am working in right now is particularly dense. When I came back in the house, I was covered with flowers after working on the plumbago; love that word. I looked like I was dressed for camouflage.
After showering, I went to school, but I couldn’t find a parking place. I went back home after texting the teachers. Today, Katrin dropped me off on her way to Walmart to deal with her phone problems. Perfect! I didn’t have to deal with parking at all.
I saw three students. I dealt with B, K, and D. B’s teacher asked me to work with him on his spelling words. He had only got two right. The lesson was on the long /o/, with three different spellings. I had him identify the words he could spell. He picked out a few he could read. It was apparent that he paid no attention to the repeated pattern used in the lesson. He picked one from each pattern and drew a blank on the rest of the words. Couldn’t even read them.
I pointed out the pattern and had him look for the words that used the same pattern. He was able to do that. I had him read those words by blending the sounds. Two problems: He still had problems identifying the vowel followed by a consonant and then a silent e as being a long vowel. Then he had problems holding the sound. He would convert the long o to a short o when he tried to blend it. He had a third problem: despite having success using cross body blending, he doesn’t use it. After asking some questions, I come to find out that he sees the mind and the body as separate things: if you are using the mind, you are not affecting the body; if you are using the body, you are not affecting the mind. He says he doesn’t play any sports, but he does run. When I asked him if he was using his mind, his body, or both when running. He was clear; he was using only his body. Ah! I pointed out to him that without a mind, he wouldn’t be able to run. This simple piece of information made a difference.
After classifying and decoding all the words on the spelling list, I worked on spelling those words. I provided the spelling for the vowel sound. “In each of these words, the long /o/ is spelling with oa.” Then he had to spell the rest of the word on his own. I would have to remind him to sound the word out. This is not an approach to spelling that appeals to this young man. I would tell him to “follow your mouth.” “Your mouth knows how to say the word.” He did more of this as he went along. Yeah! The only sound he had trouble spelling was the /sh/ sound. In fact, he had difficulty identifying the sound of the /s/ in same. He pronounced it as /sh/even though it was not the initial sound of the word. This fellow does not have good phonemic awareness. I showed him my phonemically transcribed stories on Bandcamp, but I doubt he used them despite having found them fascinating.
K, ah K. She made a face when I called her to work with me. Well, let’s include some good news. When I started with her, her hair was a mess. It was unkempt, grabbed, and stuck in a ponytail holder. I took one look at that and thought, “I will know when she is making progress when her hair looks better.” It looked better last week and looked good today. My mom always said you could tell how people feel by the way their hair sits. Days when they are not feeling well, they can’t get it to behave.
Her biggest problem is that she goes into deep shame whenever she makes an error. Her reading is pretty good. It’s just that she’s not willing to do it because of how mistakes make her feel lousy. I assured her that no one is error-free. She told me her mom was. Really? Where is this coming from? Her mom or her? The good news is she is a fantastic writer. She surges ahead to express herself, making up spellings as she goes along. If I can get her to relax, I think she will be functioning on a 4th or 5th-grade level already or at least shortly.
Then finally, there was D. The teacher said his mother would like to hire me to work with him after school. I suspect that won’t be necessary. I can do a session with her to show her how to follow up on my work. D has Hooked on Phonics at home and listens to it. I asked him which helped him more, what I do or that. (When I ask this question, I work on staying open-minded. If the other approach is helping more, it suggests that I make some adaptation in my work.) He said what I was doing helped more. I had done phonemic analysis on continuous text, writing down the letters representing the phonemes as I went along. That’s what he responded to most.
After going through the first paragraph of the transcribed story I gave him, I asked him to reread it. He couldn’t. “Do you have trouble remembering words?” Yes. “Do you have problems remembering words you see or words you hear?” “Both.” Ah.
I started working on his visual memory problems. I wrote out a five-letter word, spoke, on a slip of paper. After he looked at it for a minute, I held the paper up to his forehead and asked him to read the letters from the imprint in his visual memory. All he could remember was the letter s. I asked him my standard question, “When you remember what your blanket at home looks like, where in your brain to you feel that memory?” He pointed to the soft spot in his head. That’s too far back in my experience. I asked him to see it in front of his forehead. Then I showed him the word again and asked him to read the letters from what he saw in his mind. He remembered more, but not all.
Then I told him to write the word on his blanket in his imagination. With this trick, he was able to read all the letters. But then, the letters started moving around. That’s another problem. I told him we would fix that one on Monday.
When I was done, I went to the school driveway to meet Kathrin, who was there to pick me up after her visit to Walmart to wrestle with her device problem. She said the clerk at Walmart was very helpful. She had all her issues resolved.
Musings:
Empathy versus sympathy. Sympathy is when you feel what someone else feels. Empathy is when you recognize what someone else feels. These two terms are often used interchangeably. I prefer to see them as different.
I have a relative that some consider very empathetic, but I see her has deficient in this skill. She is, however, very sympathetic. If she identifies with your joy or your suffering, she is responsive. But, if you are someone who she considers a villain, well, you’re stuck. She has divided the world into villains and victims. She sees herself as a victim and identifies with all those she also considers victims. She can do great work helping people like that. But when it comes to people who she sees as having power, and therefore being villains, they receive no sympathy. They also receive no empathy because that’s not on the menu.
I once heard someone describe empathy is something a skilled conman is good at. Empathy can lead to compassion but not necessarily. For that matter, sympathy can be so overwhelming; their feelings incapacitate people who suffer from it. Neither sympathy nor empathy guarantees compassion and/or appropriate action.
A simple example of empathy is if I am enjoying loud music but consider that it might not be pleasurable to someone else. I might ask the other listener if they are okay with the music. And action, I might turn down the music.
I can hear someone say, “Well, that’s being considerate.” Yes, but you can’t be considerate in response to a need you can’t perceive. Perceiving the need of others when it contradicts your own is empathy. Empathy precedes consideration. No empathy no consideration.
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