I woke up at five-thirty but decided to go back to bed. When I got up at 6 am, Mike's towel was on the floor. Background information: Shortly after I returned home after Mike died on Oahu, I dreamt that he had left me for another woman. When I got up, his towel, which I refused to wash, was on the floor. Actually, the whole free-standing towel rack had been picked up and moved. There was no question that it took a force greater than my 12-pound dog Elsa. I understood it as a frantic message from Mike to tell me that, no, he had not left me for another woman. His unwashed towel has remained on that towel rack ever since. There has been only one other incident when the towel ended up on the floor. Again, at a time when I experienced some distress.
On this occasion, I had two thoughts in that half-hour between 5:30 and 6 am, when I got up. One was some excitement about writing a short article about my reading method. The second was some fear that I had contract COVID 19. I had been feeling tired a lot. I had some trouble breathing deeply. This could be a fear response or the virus. Mike was either saying, 'get to work on that article,' or responding to my concern about having the virus. I preferred to take it as an encouragement to write this article.
When I came home from my morning walk, I wrote the article on my reading method, as Shivani recommended. While my first response to Shivani's suggestion that I write an article was no, no, no, as I thought about it, my response became yes, yes, yes. I got excited about the possibility.
While the book is quite technical. I include almost everything I know that helped me to generate my ideas. However, I know that I can teach someone to use this method in about five minutes. When parents or kids see me use it, they see they can use it themselves and do. The technical stuff is for teachers who have to overcome all their training to see something different. One of the significant problems with the method is that you have to fly by the seat of your pants. Teachers don't have the answers in front of them with this approach. Well, they have some of the answers, but not all. This means that they will find themselves in situations where they don't know the answers before the kids do. In my teacher training, we were taught that teachers should never be in a position where they don't know something or feel uncertain. Really? I think that's a terrible learning model.
In the method I'm introducing, learning to read is like learning a video game, trial and error, correction followed by more effort, more errors, and more small improvements. Perfection isn't the immediate goal, just improvement.
I sat down to write that article. My sense of humor showed up. My sense of play showed up. I was writing the article for one of my parents, not for one of my teachers. I wrote most of the day on and off. On the off moments, I continued with my house cleaning. There are still a few objects to be sorted through and set aside for donation. Apart from that, there are Mike's 4,000 books to deal with. Hopefully, I live long enough to distribute them in a way that would have pleased him. When I die, the rest will wind up in a dumpster. Damon won't be bothered. I don't know if Yvette is willing to take on the task.
Judy had her first yoga class with Yvette. Yvette had set up a temporary shelter in the driveway to provide shade, along with two folding chairs and yoga mats. I called Judy when the class was over. As I expected, Judy was thrilled. Yvette is a thoughtful, detailed, and cautious teacher. She's always watching the student's body to make sure they are doing the postures correctly and not going too far to risk injury. I recommend her highly as a yoga teacher or a massage therapist.
I had at least two naps today. I have been feeling sluggish. I don't know if it is more in my body or in my mind. The sluggishness may just be a result of a lack of stimulation or stress.
Ann, one of my third-grade teachers, worked with me today on setting up a Zoom account so I could work online with one of the students I helped when school was open. Ann said he was at a K level in reading when the school year started, and now he was on a second-grade level. I had watched her work with him the other day. It was clear that while he had made good progress in his word recognition skills, his comprehension skills were still weak. I was looking forward to working with him on this.
We couldn't get the Zoom account to work on my Apple computer. I finally figured out that Zoom wouldn't work on Safari. I told Ann that I would work on it at night. I tried to download Firefox and Chrome on my Apple, but nothing worked. I turned to Mike's tablet. It already had Chrome on it. When I tried it, Zoom worked. I texted Ann to tell her. We agreed we would get together in the morning to try out the link.
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