Monday, May 3, 2021

 Monday, May 3, 2021

 

            I had my first session with adolescent G at 10 am. His mother texted me a sample of his handwriting. It was something he wrote two years ago, but it gave me the information I needed. He used print; there was no consistent letter formation, and the vertical spacing was off. I can see where he might hate to write. I decided I wanted to see him write in person and see his body mechanics before making recommendations.  

            I asked him to have a book available to read to me for this session. He had to find one once the session started. His reading sounded pretty good. I didn't hear a problem at this level. I thought maybe his problem was with comprehension. I always start with sentence and paragraph comprehension before asking questions about the whole piece. To that end, I had him read a sentence to me as I typed it. Because he read slowly, problems manifested. He lost his place easily. I asked him if the letters moved around. He said yes, but not as much as they used to. Ah! I asked him if it was better because he forced his mind to 'behave.' I told him I suspected that he used the right side of his brain to read. It doesn't work as well as the left. The left is designed to process information in sequence; the right is not.

            I told him I wanted to try BrainManagementSkills with him, using the mind to manage the brain. He asked, "Isn't the mind part of the brain?" Teenagers. They are often too smart for our good. I told him that the mind and brain relationship was a much-debated topic. I told him that I wasn't entering into this discussion. It was irrelevant for this purpose. Whatever. One part of the mind/brain can be used to change another part of the mind/brain. He accepted my answer.  

            I tested to see where he held the image of text in his visual working memory. He pointed way, way over the right side of his forehead. I have never had a student point so far over the side before. They usually point in the general area of the forehead, mainly toward the center. Because he pointed so far over to the right, I decided that he should develop a section of the left brain just as far over to the left. I had him hold the image of the letter a. That was the end of our session. This should be interesting.

            I had office hours for step-Up Tutoring at 11. I volunteered to coach tutors who wanted help with their students. I had not received an email from Julia announcing my office hours. I was checking my yahoo email. Julia had arranged for Step-Up emails to be forwarded to my Yahoo email address, but I didn't see some of the ones she claimed she had sent. I also had a Gmail Step Up Tutoring account. I checked that. Sure enough, there were the missing emails. Two people had already signed up. I decided to try and open the Zoom meeting immediately. Good thing I did. I couldn't get in through the link sent by Acuity Scheduling. Fortunately, Julia had sent me the meeting ID; I got in that way. I was ready to go when the tutors who signed up entered the room. 

            One woman was expecting a class on how to teach reading. I told her I had done a video lesson on a method to teach reading, but this was not what this was about. She had no specific question but hung around for the rest of the hour. 

            The second woman said her student's problem was with comprehension. I suggested that she start with sentence comprehension, forming as many questions as possible about the sentence, then proceeding to the second sentence. She said her student had problems with inferencing. She only answered questions by repeating the exact words in the sentence. Hmm! Sounds like fear of forming her own sentences, her own thoughts. I also suggested that she do a visualization exercise with her student, getting her to describe as many details of her image as possible. 

     The third woman said her student was having a problem with word recognition. She said that she saw evidence of letter reversals and an inability to stay on a line. I took off and spoke about the BrainManagementSkills activities: determining which part of the brain the student used for working visual and auditory memory; determining if the student used the left or right side of the brain, and instructing them to switch to the left if they were using the right; determining if there was a disruption in the left side of the brain and guiding them on the spin release. As I did, it threw out all sorts of theories on how the brain worked. I commented about not being a neuroscientist or an expert in this field; any real neuroscientist would throw me out of the room.          Then this young woman said, "I'm a neuroscientist. I am getting my master's in neuroscience at UC San Diego" Her master's thesis is on an experiment on reinforcement learning. I just read about reinforcement learning from the perspective of neuroscience in Dahaene's book the night before. Holy shit cakes           

 She said she found what I was saying fascinating. However, she didn't feel she knew enough to implement these methods on students. She was scared. I told her not to do it because she would scare the kids. That wouldn't be good. We talked for an additional half an hour after the other two women got off. I had lots of fun. But as I think about it, I hope I don't get bounced from the program for using unproven methods. Oh, well. That would be very sad for me. I felt like I was running a salon. It was a blast.

     I quickly ran down to a local art store to pick up molding clay to use with G to help with his handwriting. I saw Emmie Spies use this approach to help her student learn to form letters correctly. She said it also was effective in dealing with attention deficits. I knew nothing about this art supply store. When I entered it, I was shocked. It was as well outfitted as any art supply store I had ever seen on the mainland. They had non-hardening oil-based molding clay; you know, the kind of stuff we had in the 1940s when I was a kid. Now they make this water-based molding clay. It's suitable for certain purposes, but not for what I wanted. They had the clay in ten different colors. I looked at the selection, trying to make up my mind. The clerk finally said, 'Keep in mind that the clay will get dirty if you reuse it." I picked a dark purple.

            I had an appointment with J at 3. He had some math and some language arts to do. He was whizzing through the math faster than I could keep up. I turned to work on the updates, telling him that I was there if he needed me. He got every example correct. When he checked the language arts assignment, he discovered he had already completed it. He was done in no time;

            I had I at 4 pm. I had proposed working on writing last time. When I asked her what she wanted to work on, she said the inferencing exercises, not the writing. When I asked her why she didn't want to write, she said she wasn't good at it. Perfect! Precisely what we should be working on. I assured her that developing the idea was all on me.

   Nonetheless, when I used the color prompt, she froze. I don't have that experience with many people. She chose the color purple, but she couldn't identify an object of that color. I had her write about purple being her favorite color. We wrote five or six sentences. The things that came up were grapes, his favorite food, and Justin Bieber's shirt. Purple is also his favorite color. She was amazed that she, with my help, had written as much as we had. We will be doing this every week until she's chomping at the bit to write her own story. 

            I was attending an expensive private school. Her third-grade teacher should be prohibited from working with children. She will only tolerate the perfect student. I am working with I. because she had some problems with reading. I have been working with her for several months. The teacher has never heard her read since I started working with her. Today I told I. outright, "I don't like your teacher." A teacher's job is to nurture children, not sort them into fixed categories.

            Again, I spent the evening with Endeavor. I find the series very comforting. I know there's murder in all cases, but it doesn't focus on sinister people for the most part. Of course, there are murderers, but it's not edgy. The heroes are rarely the target of malevolence, and they infrequently get hurt. Ah!