Today was a busy, busy day. I was pushed out of bed by my alarm, even though I had gone to bed at a reasonable hour. I completed 5,000 steps before I went inside. I had an appointment with Julia, the Step-Up Tutoring techie, at 8:30, a tutoring appointment with J. in LA, and then an 11:30 with D. here in Hawaii.
No matter what Julia does, we cannot get my Zoom to work through Google. We actually set something up where I hosted a Zoom on my Apple computer, sent an invitation to myself, opened that invitation on the tablet, and then switched hosts. Crazy. I cannot get into Zoom through the Step-Up Zoom setup.
Julia had to send the information to J.’s mom differently because I wasn’t doing it the normal way. J’s sister was ducking in and out of the screen. She was still interested. I want her present while I work with J because she will benefit indirectly as she hears us work on language. I asked her what she wanted us to do, work on reading or writing? She said, reading. J. tried to open his reading app. He couldn’t because I was the host, and he was blocked. That hadn’t happened before. I told her, sorry, we were going to work on reading.
I opened a word document before J. got on. Thank God. I would never have been able to set it up in a timely way during the session. I asked him if he enjoyed writing to get a feel about his level. He said he did like it. Did he want to write fiction or nonfiction? He said nonfiction. Okay, what did he want to write about? No idea. I suggested that he write about something that happened yesterday.
He gave me one sentence in which he told me that he cut his finger while cutting up fruit. Since he said he liked writing, I expected him to make some effort to develop that idea, but no. His following sentence was unrelated. It was about something his mother doing the cooking.
I said, “Stop. We’re going to develop the story of your cut finger.” It didn’t take much effort to pull this out of him. My presence is pretty heavy in this story. It will get softer as we go along as he develops ideas more himself. Then I will allow the language to be more his because I don’t want to interrupt the story development.
The Cut
JV
Yesterday, me, my dad and my sister were cutting fruit to make a punch. We were cutting apples, papaya, and pineapple. We were sitting around the kitchen table. My dad was showing me how to cut the fruit correctly because I didn’t know how. He showed me how to move my hand so I didn’t get cut.
My dad cut up one pineapple into multiple chunks and passed them out to me and my sister. I was cutting the pineapple, and I didn’t get my thumb out of the way. I cut my thumb. It was bleeding a lot.
I said, “I cut my thumb.” Nobody has a reaction because it was a small cut. I washed out my thumb and then looked for a band-aide. We didn’t have one; we were out.
We were out of band-aides because there were a lot of cuts in our family. Every Friday, my mom cooks a lot of food. She makes Mexican and Guatemalan food to make extra money. She calls friends to tell them to come and get it. Those friends call other friends. People love my mom’s food. She is an excellent cook. Then people come to our house to get the food.
Because we didn’t have any band-aids, my dad got some paper napkins, and put them around my thumb, cut a plastic bag in half, wrapped the plastic bag around my thumb, and made a knot in the plastic bag. After that, I continued to cut the fruit with the plastic bag covering my thumb so it didn’t get wet.
I love doing this cowriting activity with anyone. I learn so much about the person. It is fascinating to see how their mind works and learn things about their lives.
If any of you are wondering how my writing their story with them could help them improve anything, I don’t blame you. I started doing this with a 2nd-grade boy who was not reading yet. My goal was to write stories he ‘wrote’ and would be interested in reading. I wanted to make sure that the story read well, ergo the cowriting.
After a few stories, his mom called me and told me how impressed she was with his writing. I said, “Well, he’s not really writing these stories. He is giving me the ideas, but I’m writing them.” She said, “You don’t understand; he’s speaking better.” I have heard the same response over and over and over. Each time the parent or teacher tells me how I won’t believe the student is showing improvement. After thirty years of this work, I don’t question it anymore.
I think students learn as I model language and story structure expressing their thoughts.
Actually, I’m not that far out. In the seventies, Fr. Curran of Loyola developed a similar method for teaching English as a Second Language. He called it Community Learning. The students sat in a circle. When someone wanted to speak, the teacher went and stood behind her/him. The student would do the best they could to communicate what they wanted to say. The teacher would then rephrase it in correct English; then, the student would repeat those words. As in cowriting, this approach models words that could be used to express the student’s ideas.
We could only work for half an hour because I had signed in incorrectly to my Zoom account. I bought a year’s subscription, so I could record to iCloud. With their parents’ permission, I can post some videos publicly showing how I approach teaching.
I did some gardening between working with J and my appointment with D. I cut down more heliconia, anyone that didn’t have a flower on it or an unfurling leaf.
As I prepared for my session with D., I couldn’t get Mike’s tablet to work, so I signed in to Zoom on my Apple. I didn’t consider this ideal because the Apple computer doesn’t have a touch screen. D. decided he wanted to continue working on math. Fortunately, I figured out how to use the touchpad to write on the screen using my finger. It may actually work better than the touch screen with a stylus.
D. remembered nothing from the work we did the other day. I had to start again. I gave him two addition problems. 2+2+2= versus 1+2+3= and asked which one of the two could be made into a multiplication problem. We had discussed this before. I calmly reviewed it. He got that problem, so I gave him another example. There was no application from the first problem to the second. He made small improvements over the forty-five minutes we worked. Let’s see what he recalls next Wednesday in our next session.
Before we signed off, I had him read to me from Socks. He read a passage he had read many times before. Because he knew what it was about, he didn’t read the words accurately. He doesn’t make an effort to attend. In response to my telling him he read the sentence inaccurately, he read each word separately. However, he read it, maintaining the music of the sentence. I thought ‘wow’ this would be a good approach to getting him to read accurately. Since D. tends to race over the words, slowing down may train his mind’s eye to read accurately. I asked him if he was looking for patterns now. This is something he does not do on his own, not in reading or in math. He views everything as specific; he doesn’t make generalizations. I wonder if it is a cognitive deficit problem or just a bad habit.
I’m not too worried about this boy. He is a lovely person. He will do all right in life. He will be able to get a decent job that he can hold forever, and he will get a lovely woman with whom he will have a lovely family. I just have to help him make it through high school without being psychologically destroyed by his inability to function in an academic environment.
After I was through with D., I headed into town to take care of some chores. I stopped at the vet and picked up a bag of Elsa’s food. I get special food to help with her allergy, which is the cause for her skin condition, which has been spectacularly good of late. I have added half a teaspoon of MakesNoClaims (Intrasound Power) to her meals twice a day. I think that may be what is
Then I went down to the post office to mail three boxes of books. The bank is off the same parking lot. I cashed a check. Then I went to Target.
I picked up a good supply of doggie poop bags at Target, and I finally found some Swiss cheese. I developed a sudden craving for Swiss cheese the other day and had a devil of a time finding it. It used to be as common as dirt; now, all I could find was one small package of pre-sliced Swiss cheese.
When I got home, it was nap time. Then Darby joined me on my before-dinner walk. The other day, she gave me the name of a gardener who she said did a great job cutting back trees, so they didn’t grow back quickly. When I got home and saw the name, it was quite a shock. It was the name of the guy who butchered my trees. I don’t know the explanation for his treatment of my trees. She said she knew of another guy who had a good reputation.
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