I had a good night's sleep. Once I was up, I was limited in what I felt I could do because I was still a little rocked from the other day. I was not doing that well, grief over Mike, grief over the political situation. I think I'm lucky that those are the only two concerns I have. So many others have so many more.
One of my fellow walkers stopped to tell me that he would be moving to the mainland in a month. He and his wife had been here for six years. They're moving back because his wife has health issues, and they wanted to be close to family.
While having my morning water, I called Dorothy to go over the 'free-response piece I wrote to post on Wyzant, the tutoring site. Dorothy is an enthusiastic editor. She loves doing it, as I love writing. She immediately pointed out to me that the piece didn't hang together well. I had the same feeling but found it hard to figure out how to fix it. Panic prevented clear thinking. I can write revealing things on the update, but talking honestly about myself when I'm 'selling' myself is very hard. I feel naked. While I don't think anything of being seen in my all-together, having to reveal that I think I'm a great teacher, unique and incredibly gifted, is scary. I can say it here because I'm not selling my gifts; I'm just talking about who I am as a human being, suffering from the same insecurities most.
My father raised me to be wholly myself, for moral reasons as well as psychological ones. Then I wound up being distinct. I often can handle that. I'm a little more brazen. I think about topics many people don't; I have my own perspective on approaching life, therapy, you name it.
Mike provided me shelter from the crowd. I had this wonderful, safe corner where I was loved for who I was. That's not to say that he liked all the ways 'I' manifested, but on the whole, there was more "yes!" than there was "no!" My mom was more 'no!" than 'yes!" She tried to convince me that she knew that everyone agreed with her, and no one agreed with me. She did a lot of damage.
I feel sad that I can't be more assertive in presenting my teaching methods and healing to the world. I have amazing results. Not because of some massive intellect; no, what drove me was the need to solve educational problems when I encountered them. I have been relentless.
Many teachers feel comfortable following the directions provided by the experts. I could never do that. I couldn't use it unless I saw a connection between my teaching and the students' learning. I was driven to figure out methods that made sense to me. That's how I wound up where I am.
I studied other methods. I got a Master's in Reading. That was very helpful; I learned no one knew more than I did. What I learned there didn't answer the questions I had. I wanted to know what the reading process was and how someone learned it. I tried to figure out what I did, not on the surface, but in the deepest part of my brain that made that process automatic. If it was automatic, something must be going on behind the scenes. What was that?
Developing the ideas has taken knowledge and thought. But the methods I have developed are something a child can learn and use to teach reading to other children. They are easy, obvious. Some teachers think they can't do what I can because they don't have my gifts. Most of what I have is knowledge about cognition and linguistics that are the basis of my methods.
There is one thing I have that many teachers don't have, patience. That patience is born out of curiosity. That curiosity is the foundation of my diagnostic skills. I observe closely what the student does and does not do. I don't just look at the surface knowledge. Teachers are taught to look for very superficial mistakes to evaluate what the student needs. Are they missing phonics? Teach traditional phonics. Are their comprehension skills poor? Teach macrostructure comprehension.
My patience also extends to the student's needs. I have been working with D. for over a year now. I have suspected that there was a psychological component to his memory problems. I think I did make one foray into this area at the beginning of third grade, but he wasn't ready. Two weeks ago, he was. He was prepared to admit to his sadness because he had memory problems. It took a year to get to that point. In our last session, he remembered the multiplication facts we worked on for something like three months. This was literally the first time he got all five multiplication facts correct on his first attempt!!! We'll see if he can repeat that this Wednesday.
Just as I hung up from Dorothy, Kaiser called to make an appointment to see a doctor for my heel pain. I got one at 10:30 am. I meditated first. My question is do I have plantar fasciitis or a heel spur. A co-worker in Ohio had terrible problems with a heel spur. She finally submitted to surgery. Scary. Here I'm making significant progress with my spine, and my left hip and right heel started giving me problems.
I didn't meet with my primary because she is working remotely. I saw a PA. She said it didn't make much difference which problem I had; the solutions were the same: an insert to support my arch and exercises. When I tried one of the stretches. I thought it fit right in with what I'm already working on. I find that I never wholly straighten my right leg. The exercises all called for flexing my ankle with a straight knee. When I do that, my hip alignment changes.
I spent most of the day cleaning the house rather than doing any writing.
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Musing
I heard a talk about the downside of choice on a TED talk this morning. It ties in with what I talked about in yesterday's musing. Our prosperity is our undoing; our preoccupation with prosperity is our undoing. Mammon is winning the race.
The talk was about the negative effect of choice on people. Having no choice is devasting; having too much choice is just as bad.
1. When we are faced with too many choices, we freeze and choose none.
2. When we have too many choices, we are never fully satisfied with the choice we make. This applies to salad dressing, retirement plans, or marriage partners.
I was talking to a friend about a young couple who broke up because his wife wasn't happy. The husband presents as a devoted husband and father, but she wasn't satisfied.
My friend and I both observe how couples today break up pretty easily. We both have long marriages that have had their times of discontent. Toughing those times out has paid off big time. In the end, we wound up with better marriages than we had before the glitch. My friend did some dating before she chose her guy. Me? While I was single till I met Mike when I was thirty-three, I didn't have one satisfying relationship before him. I certainly wasn't pursued by a hoard of young men, except maybe to get in my pants, hardly a good criterion for a long-term relationship. Mike was the first guy you loved me for my mind and my soul, as well as my body.
Today's young people have some sense that someone is out there. They have the whole planet to consider. Thank God I didn't have that much to consider. I find shopping at Macy's overwhelming.
In the bad old days, we married the boy/girl next door, the one sitting in a neighboring pew in our house of worship, or maybe from a neighboring town from a school that played sports with my school's teams.
This led me to this tangential riff:
Do you know, Mike actually filled that bill. His high school played my high school in intermural sports. He was pretty close to the boy next door. We had a great deal in common. I was a first-generation American; he was second. He was a red-diaper baby; my diaper was a faded parlor pink. A red-diaper baby was born to parents who were card-carrying Communists, as his parent were. My parlor-pink diaper represents my parents dabbling with communism.
My parents met at an engagement/New Year's Eve party in 1928. The future groom was an editor of a Berlin communist paper. He left Germany immediately after Hitler's election. Good move!
Both our fathers were professionals, the first to go to college in their families. Mine was a lawyer; Mike's was an architect. My father wound up with two law degrees (one from Germany and one from America.) Mike wound up with two Ph.Ds.
I think Mike and my dad even looked somewhat alike. What can I tell you? I married my father. But Mike was an improved version. My dad was much more controlling, manipulative. He died with his arrogance intact. Mike gave his up.
Yep, he was arrogant when I met him. I knew at the time that it was part of his appeal and why. Fortunately, we were both able to let go of our need to have that in our lives.
There were other differences: My dad thought my mom's place was in the home; Mike respected my choices and never discouraged me. At one point, he encouraged me to be more ambitious but in a direction that held no interest for me. He wanted me to become a principal. I had no interest in administration. I could barely cope with administering a small group of kids. The classroom overwhelmed me.
I love teaching with a focus on the students learning rather than the subject matter. That requires a focus on the individual that makes classroom teaching challenging at best. I might have done well as an educational therapist. Maybe that was a direction I could have moved in that would have allowed for more success. But then, I wouldn't have been working with the kids who needed my attention the most whose parents couldn't afford the support.
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