We had more water drama last night. B. returned from Hilo after taking his grandson home equipped with plumber's glue and plumber's primer, ready to redo the pipe I broke; he already tried to fix it once. He said it would be set to go at 8 pm. When I went to bed around 9:30 pm, I could hear the water rushing through the supply pipes in my backyard. This was a concern. I called B and Josh. Both told me the same thing: the noise will stop once all the pipes, and water heaters on the property are full.
Ignoring that sound while I tried to sleep was out. I was too concerned that it would be running all night. I was afraid the pipes would break. The water waste!! The money!! Knowing There was nothing I could do to determine the actual cause, I closed my sliding bedroom door to muffle the sound. I calculated we would be out of water on Sunday, and we couldn't get a plumber in until Monday. I sighed about the cost of the plumber. I was able to let it go. Around 10:30, I heard a gurgling sound and then silence. Ah!!
I learned a way to conserve water. I had filled a gallon jug with water from my rain barrel. When I washed my hands, I started wetting them with some water from a jug. Then I applied some liquid soap. Next, I plugged the sink and poured water over my hands. This is the interesting part; I sloshed my hands around in the water in the sink base. That got more soap off. Finally, I poured some more water over my partially rinsed hands. The process reminded me of the bowl and pitcher people used before there wasn't running water. I'm going a adopt this procedure. Maybe I'll be able to save as much water as was lost due to my breaking the standing pipe in my yard with my 2,000 lbs. car.
I love NPR. While it is clearly opposed to Trump, they make an effort, small in comparison, to present the point of view of the political right. I heard a sociologist speaking today about listening to other people's stories. She said we all have a back story, which allows us to take in particular information and reject other pieces. She had a luncheon with a Rush Limbo fan. The woman's point of view certainly didn't make sense to the speaker. At one point, the Rush fan asked the speaker how she could be comfortable listening to her. The speaker said she turns off her alarm system.
If we are ever going to be a whole community again, we will have to learn to listen to each other. We may not like what the person says, but it is crucial to understand why they hold that opinion. In other words, have empathy for people who don't see the world as you do.
The Rush fan also pointed out that the left has a long history of prejudice against blacks and 'red-neck whites.'. I can see it myself. There is a running condescension for those who are not sophisticated. If I were at the other end of that stick, I'd be pretty pissed.
Besides being open listeners, it is also essential to learn to present our perspective without sounding like we're trying to steamroll the other person. Both the listening and the speaking are hard, hard, hard.
I worked with a new student yesterday. She's D.'s sister. Her mom was concerned about her reading skills, her word recognition; she thought her comprehension was good. She's a good girl, so she met with me, but she made it clear that she didn't think she had a problem.
I had her read to me. Fairly fluent, but monotone. I told her that was her biggest problem. She told me she didn't like reading out loud. That had been clear from the tightness in her throat.
I told her I was going to teach her something I designed to help students who were having trouble reading but had a surprising impact on me. After making a forty-five-minute cassette tape, remember those?), I say my reading speed jump. I was 54 and had straight As in grad school. She relaxed a little.
I told her to pick a word, any word. She chose the word laughed. Nothing like taking on English's odd spelling right from the start. She was able to identify the /l/ sound and the letter which represented it. She also got the short /a/. I told her one of the rules I teach: when you see two vowels together, assume they make one sound even though they don't always do that. Next came the final sound in laugh. Anyone out there laughing? She tried a /g/ sound. I responded as I always do," If you say /laug/, then it's right. If you don't, it isn't. The criteria for the correct pronunciation of the word is the way the person says it. They can observe and discover what they do. (Yes, I know there are people with speech problems or who speak English with an accent. Not dealt with here. Only concerned now about native English speakers, regardless of their pronunciation.) She finally got the /f/ sound. I told her the [f] was represented by the gh. Next came the -ed¬. It took her a minute, but she got it.
That took all of 15 minutes. I am writing a whole book on this process. It is so simple. The only problem is that when you teach with this method, the teacher is out on a limb as the student is. I knew the hidden tricks of the spelling of laughed, but I have come across words where those rules are not true, even after using this method for the last twenty-six years. For me, that's part of the fun. I can learn something new. Absolutely love the process. I am never bored. The kids usually respond well.
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Musings:
In a back issue of the Sunday New York Times, I came across an article on Non-schooling, where kids are allowed to follow their own interests. I agree; the educational system we have is riddled with problems. I'm not against non-schooling. I do think people have to realize that they have to develop a strategy for making it possible. Just letting kids do whatever they want is not going to work. If it did, everyone would have been literate in the last century. There were lots of kids who didn't go to school.
The system at that time worked for those kids. As our current school system prepares kids to be factory workers, the old system equipped kids to follow their parents' footsteps. They learned at their parents' elbows. The curriculum was highly structured. The kids were tested regularly. For farming kids, it was: do it right or lose a limb.
I also know of someone who was in a school that tried that open-ended educational format. He said it was complete chaos. I can also remember my father seeing my interest in something, pushing me to pursue it further. Yuck!
I love the idea behind non-schooling. It is learning through discovery. This is what underpins my teaching methods. I generally find if I can hook a kid on self-reliance through discovery, it doesn't take much 'teaching' on my part. But I'm doing this with individual children, usually when their teacher or parent says they have a problem. The teachers I worked with were always amazed at how quickly I could resolve an issue.
My strategy: observe the student and ask them why they think they're having a problem. Is this strategy 100% successful? Hardly. Nothing is. But it works more often than whatever had been tried before.
I love the idea of learning through exploration instead of waterboarding information into a kid. Someone has to think about the need to follow up with kids in the non-schooling context.
At the end of the article, the author points out that we were expecting young children to demonstrate the self-discipline we apply in our teens and adulthood.
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