Monday, February 8, 2021

 Monday, February 8, 2021

 

            I slept so deeply after going to bed that I woke up several times thinking I must have slept through to morning instead of just 2 or 3 hours. I do love a good sleep. 

            I have been incorporating the acupuncturist's exercises for my lower body. She offered without my prompting that my spinal curvature caused most of the problems with my body in my old age. The asymmetry has caused my prolapse, my hernia, and my arthritis. She is the first to say that the muscles in my left leg are atrophied. I remember thinking how much I preferred the slender look of my left thigh versus the beefy look of my right one in my twenties. Be careful what you wish for.

            I did more work on the PowerPoint Presentation. I will be going through it again with Laura of Step-Up. This is the new reduced version. Each time I reduce the amount of information, I learn something new about the topic. 

            I learned something incredible today. It's obvious. I could hear someone saying, "English phonics is so irregular, it's impossible to learn." English is not the one-to-one correspondence between letter and sound of Italian or traditional Hawaiian. Any literate person could learn how to pronounce Italian words from the written form well enough for an Italian to understand what they're saying even if they didn't speak Italian. The Italian might be laughing at the accent and reading rate, but they would understand it. Italian is a transparent orthography. English, not so much. Can you believe there are six regular pronunciations for the letter a. That does not count the letter appearing in digraphs like ea or ay.  

            Readers have to learn that English phonics is heavily dependent on contexts. The a in an makes a different sound than the a in ane, etc., etc. English is context-dependent in phonics and in vocabulary. I don't know enough about other languages to know how much this distinguishes English from other languages. For example, the word cook can be a noun (The cook burnt the soup.), a verb (They cook dinner.), or an adjective (cookware, cooktop). The word look has about twenty-five different usages. It's all context-dependent, and yet we never miss a beat.

            Of course, English has nothing on Hebrew, which can't be bothered to include vowels. My next-door neighbor is Israeli. If I were to write the previous sentence in Hebrew, it would look like this: "M  nxt dr nghbr s srl." It takes one year to learn to read Italian, 3 to learn English, and six to learn Hebrew. 

            I was supposed to have four students today. One bailed on me. The first was H. He's hard work, mostly because I have no idea what I'm doing. My job is to get him to respond to me. He gets to choose the activity. Getting him to take me into account is hard for him. He's autistic. Getting me to stay focused and feel good about what I'm doing is hard for me. However, his parents see a difference. That's what it's all about.

            Next, I had J. I sent him the link, no response. I called twice- no answer. I finally texted him, saying I'd given up. I took a nap. I might be concerned with some other student, but not with him. When we first started, he would be texting me a few minutes before the class, asking for the link. He asked for a make-up class if I had to cut a session short. I think this is great. I think he feels a little more relaxed, independent- less in need of help. It's not that he can't use more, but it may be time for a break, let what we've done so far percolate.

            I had a new student I at 4. She's attending a high-powered private school that says she needs help because she is only on grade level!! I had her read to me. I heard the problem right away. There was a bumper car feeling to her reading. I started with the BrainManagementSkills right away. Her visual working memory was in the right spot. Her auditory working memory was in the same location as her visual but a little more to the left. I showed her the right place. She said it felt weird- a sign that this was unfamiliar to her. This means we may have found part of the problem. Her reading rate improved immediately, but she missed some of the words. I took her through the letter naming activity. She did pretty well. I stumbled when I first did it. It is always an adjustment to use the conscious mind for something you do automatically, but doing it is the best way to improve a skill. I also did some of the phonemic awareness activities.

            I spoke to her mom when we got off the phone. She told me that she had a report from the school. They said she needed some phonics instruction. It would have been nice if she had told me this beforehand. 

            Next, I had M, whose mom died two years ago. When I looked at the copy of the essay she dictated yesterday, I found grammatical errors. I ran it through Grammarly and sent her the corrected version today. She dictated a version each night because I didn't want her memorizing the exact words and finding herself stuck. If she kept the categories in mind, she could go back to the image of the situation she was describing and write something original. The organization is 

            Introduction

            Para#1 Surfing

            Para#2 Slime

            Para #3 TV

            Conclusion.

            For paragraphs #1-3, she had to write about anything she could think of about her mom and her and the main topic. 

            For dinner, I had the leftover kalua pork from the ordination luncheon. OMG! It tasted like salt with some food mixed in. Into the trash it goes.

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Musings:

             A friend called to say that she heard that the Federal Government was mandating a 13 Point Black Lives Matter educational plan including 'indoctrination' on transgender issues. She was distressed about having her grandson be taught who had a penis or a vagina. I thought, "Wait a minute!" Before we go into a complete panic, have you heard this news from more than one source. She responded that she and her husband both heard it on one of the network news shows. 

            I checked this information online. The federal government is not involved, no less imposing this program on all public schools. A group of DC educators had put together a suggested curriculum. No one was imposing anything. Not that the folks wouldn't want it imposed; it just wasn't happening.

            I have to wonder how this newscaster presented the news. "New out of DC, a 13-point education problem to teach our children about how black people are important and transgender people." Instead of, "A group of interested educators living in DC has put together a 13 point educational curriculum to foster tolerance for people of color and the transgender." The first one is designed to inflame. If he did that, he should be marked as an unreliable newscaster, one who either had a bias so profound that he is prepared to enrage people to violence, or he is a real little shit, promoting his career at the cost of civil unrest. Mark that newscaster!!! They are an unreliable source of information!!!!