Thursday, April 8, 2021
Scott also finished up a small job he hadn't gotten to when he installed my toilet. He had to file down or clip the screws that held the toilet to the floor so those decorative caps could fix over them. Everything's in order now.
After watching that video presentation from the curriculum team for LAUSD on Phonics, I was upset. I called Judy to tell her what I had seen. I had hoped that I wasn't still so far out from the mainstream. I love my work and the results I get. I don't like feeling that far out from the mainstream. Judy recognizes the value of what I do and takes it in stride. She neither puts me down nor exaggerates the benefits of what I do. It just is, and I just am. Ah!
My computer was sluggish this morning, slow to save a file. I thought to call Brian H. and ask him if it was a problem to be concerned about. On my way to Kaiser for my surgical appointment to have my hernia checked, I got a phone call from an unidentified number. I sometimes answer them just for my amusement. However, this was a call from an old contact. The online Microsoft computer company that ran the scam on me.
I hadn't recognized the number. I was surprised to hear it was from them. I said, "You have your nerve calling me after your company tried to run a scam on me!" He started telling me no, it wasn't them. It must have been some company that hacked them. Please, speak to his supervisor, Alex. It was Alex who passed me on to the scammers. There may be a small group within the company that does the scamming. Alex picks out people he thinks would be good targets. Let me see, old, recently widowed; she sounds like a likely easy prey. Kevin, the tech, told me that I didn't have a new operating system downloaded, preventing updates.
Since the scam, I started working with in-person computer support. Fortunately, my Apple computer was in the shop at the time of the original scam. I can't remember why- some hardware problem. Oh, yes. In fact, it was either Alex or Kevin who recommended that I take it to a local shop. If he did it, he would have to do something to my files that would be risky. They could do it without that risk. The local shop cleaned up my computer.
Recently, I had another problem with the computer. I called Apple support. They told me I needed a new battery. I called the local shop I had dealt with before. They wanted to do a full diagnostic for a mere $100 in addition to the new battery and the installation. I didn't see why this was necessary; Apple had already run the diagnostic. All I wanted was a new battery. My friend Adam had a tenant who actually worked for the shop. I called and quit because he figured he could deliver better service for less. I called him. He took care of the battery, ordering it online and coming over to my house to install it for much less than it would have cost me at the local shop. That's who I called this morning when I got that call from the online Microsoft support people who tried to scam me. He assured me they couldn't crash my computer or do much damage. He could come over. I was on my way to Kaiser; I would call him when I was on my way home.
I had a surgical appointment at Kaiser about my hernia. As I expected, the doctor said it was trivial; she wouldn't recommend surgery at this time, but I could get it if I wanted. No. What I did want was advice about what to look for. I was told it could stay the way it was until I died, or it could become seriously worse suddenly. If it got worse, a piece of my digestive tract would be pushed through an opening in my abdominal wall. I would feel nausea and not have to go to the bathroom. Sounds fantastic! She said when that happens to get myself to a doctor immediately. I got the picture.
I stopped at Ace hardware before heading home. I was looking for a non-slip rug pad. They didn't have quite what I needed. They had something closer to shelf lining. When I bought it, I realized why what I had been using hadn't worked. I have been trying to get a plastic-covered floor pad to not slide on carpeting. Well, the plastic is slick. Everything slides off that.
Shortly after I got home, Brian arrived. He ran programs to check my computer. He assured me the scammers weren't into it. When I asked him about the new program, he said he hadn't downloaded it because it would change the computer format. Why do they do that? Then you have to learn a whole different system for working your computer. If I have one that works, why can't I keep that one?
I had my second session with K. I wanted to work on his constant need to fidget and his inability to concentrate. When I asked him where the discomfort was, he squirmed and said in his head. That was a surprise. I expected it to be in his body, muscles spasming. I checked out the movement in his head. He couldn't give me much information; other than he couldn't control his thoughts. Moving seemed to help. I tried the slow-moving line exercise. He could focus and sit still but said he didn't like it. No, he was not more comfortable afterward. As far as I can make out, K has the self-awareness of an appliance lightbulb. After the slow line exercise, he said he felt uncomfortable – get this- in his nose. It felt weird. I asked him if he thought what we were doing was dangerous. He said no. I explained weird means something new is happening in your body/nervous system. It feels weird because it's new. You have to know the difference between safe weird and dangerous weird. I had his forebrain tell his back brain that this activity was safe. He experienced some relaxation.
When I asked K if he felt differently, he said no. He always felt this way. He had no trouble concentrating and sitting still in school. His mother told me the exact opposite.
Then I did some of the Using Context Clues exercise with two-sentence setups with a blank, which had to be filled in from the choices below. Today, I started with the book on a second-grade level. In our last session, I used one from the first-grade level.
I started reading the words very slowly. K said he wanted to take over. He moved through 5 of these exercises quickly. I asked if it felt better than when he usually did schoolwork. He said no. It came out he didn't consider these exercises schoolwork. Okay. If he's comfortable, it's not schoolwork; if he's not comfortable, it is. He said something about having trouble counting in math. I asked his mom. She said she knew nothing about it. His teachers never said anything about him having problems in math.
At 2 pm, I tried to link with J on Zoom. He didn't respond. I called, no answer. Then he texted me; he was eating. When he got on, I asked him if he saw a difference due to the phonemic work we did yesterday when I broke the words down into their basic sound units very slowly. He said yes. He did better on his homework. He asked if he could put his earphones on and continue eating while I did the work. Yep. I did it for 10 minutes. He will hopefully start listening to the audio files and let me off the hook once he is sufficiently comfortable with me doing it in person.
I had a session with E at 2:30. I called a few minutes before; he didn't answer. He called back a few minutes later. He was still in class when I called.
I asked E. what the most annoying thing was. He said it had nothing to do with him. Two of his friends were fighting. He was trying to smooth things over, but nothing was working. His friend Elijah had talked to his friend Mike's girlfriend. Oh, boy. It had everything to do with him. His social group was being torn apart by a fight over a girl. I had E. see himself standing alone, looking around for a place where he could go if his social group did fall apart. He found something. Neither one of us had any idea what he was thinking other than there were more social contacts out there than in his current group.
I saw that Mike was upset because he depended on his girlfriend's attention to feel like a worthwhile person. He saw Elijah as threatening that relationship, as bird-dogging his girlfriend. On the other hand, Elijah saw that he was being accused of being a bad person, frightening him. Maybe his conversation with Mike's girlfriend was totally innocent. Perhaps it was an expression of Mike wanting the relationship Mike had for himself without even being aware of it.
I told Elijah that things like this would be happening among his friends. This is what adolescence was about. He wanted to know why it had to be that way. My explanation was based on theories of evolutionary psychology, as usual. Our brains were formed at a time when this behavior was still suitable. We were working with an old operating system and trying to download Zoom. There is a way it can be done with our brains, even if that doesn't work with computers. Our brains are more flexible than any computer program.
I had A immediately after E. He was reading more rapidly but making more errors. I think he was using his automatic processing more. Now we have to polish his perceptual system. I will give him the exercise of naming letters and underlying vowels. That seems to do the trick.
I went for a short walk and talked to Jean, my hanai sister, checking up on how I was doing. So sweet. She had difficulty hearing me. The wind was blowing, disrupting the sounds.
When I came back in the house, I had an appointment with adolescent D. He said he didn't see a difference after our session yesterday when I got him to stop using his visual working memory to process speech sounds and use his auditory processing working memory. Sounds didn't feel like they were louder or clearer. Okay. Too bad, very sad, but it wasn't successful. I continued with him struggling to decode words, identifying the phonemes, and blending them back together. While he still did some reversals. Reading fi in a word as if, he identified those moments and was able to correct them. He had more trouble hearing and fixing problems with intruded or deleted sounds.
Because he sounded frustrated and angry, I offered to do the work. I did the same exercise I had done with J; I read the text's transcribed version, making every sound. I could feel his anger and contempt. I asked, "Are you thinking, "Of course, I can do this because you're doing the reading?" Yep. I had to explain why I was doing it. I asked him to focus on the spot, identify the auditory working memory and feel the sound in that spot. He actually relaxed and listened. Wow! What an improvement in his openness to sound. Very exciting.
I called Judy, returning her call from earlier in the afternoon while I was working. Her computer had stopped working. She has a book she's written on that hard drive. Yikes! Brian, who helped me this morning, is also her go-to guy. He will be over tomorrow at 4. She is booked every moment.
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Musings:
OMG! I watched a video presentation on teaching Phonics following the model put out by the University of Florida, the leading researcher on the learning and teaching of reading. OMG! I am so different from them. It's scary. I prefer to think I'm way ahead of them.
They now acknowledge that phonemic awareness is different from Phonics. According to them, you're teaching phonemic awareness if you don't correlate the sounds with the written form. Phonemes are just sounds and don't have anything to do with the written form. Does that mean that once a linguist transcribes a spoken language, they are no longer dealing with the language's phonemic structure?
They spoke about the 'sight words' or 'high-frequency words that have to be learned by visual memory without any references to the phonemes or the phonemes' relationship to the letters representing them. The implication is there are no phonemes in the 'sight words,' and the letters do not represent the sounds.
Let's look at the word said. Now here's a word with a phonetic twist. The ai does not represent the short e as a rule. (It probably does in some unstressed syllable somewhere.) For starters, the s and the d are phonetically regular. Then it is the ai that represents the sound of the short e. The alternative would be spelling said and sd as is done in Hebrew. Therefore, the ai does represent a phoneme.
The Phonics being taught is the same rigid brand that only includes those patterns which are rigidly regular. No irregularities allowed!
Then the presenters talked about blending. They spoke about blending as having something to do with speed. It has zero to do with speed. It has to do with transitioning from one sound to the next, so there is a continuous sound flow. It can be done slowly or quickly.
They did acknowledge that the field of reading has to recognize the insights from psychology, linguistics, and neuroscience. However, they don't use the insights from these fields. That would require they actually studied phonemes under the guidance of a linguist, and cognition under the supervision of someone who had some expertise in the field. Okay, neuroscience sounds like it is just accessible to those in the medical profession. I've been doing BrainManagementSkills for close to 50 years now.
No, I am not thrilled that I am so far ahead of mainstream research. It makes me out of my time. No fun. Scary.
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