Dorothy was working with a high school student who I believed was suffering from an auditory processing problem. We talked about him periodically. She had made remarkable progress with him. She had also given him a copy of my audio file, but he hadn't listened to it yet. I could appreciate that. I recommended something unfamiliar to both of them.
Dorothy was uncomfortable using my phonemic awareness method. It was so frustrating. I felt like Cassandra. Dorothy said she felt uncomfortable because a) it was unfamiliar, and b) she felt like I represented it as a miracle cure. I do share success stories, but I suspected her resistance to getting involved was because of my tone of voice.
I could sympathize with her. I had a friend who talked about religious and political matters in a tone that sounded like she tried to convince me to see it her way. I know her intensity made me uncomfortable. I also know it would be much better to describe what I do in a balanced way, offering it clearly instead of being pushy or messing up my explanation. Thirty years ago, I had a friend who commented on my presentation style. I agreed with her evaluation then. Sad that I have made so little progress. I can't find a middle ground, a sane place.
Dorothy had a fantastic suggestion. She suggested I make a video with a student demonstrating what I do. She said when she looks for directions on doing something, she skips the written directions and looks for a demonstration. I had an ideal student for this purpose, one who just needs a little bit of help rather than one who can't read at all or is three years below grade level.
I couldn't believe her mom would agree, but I screwed my courage to the sticking point and asked her. The mom said, okay. Wow! I didn't know if she had asked her daughter yet.
She asked me if it was just for limited distribution to people who might have an interest. I realized that I couldn't control what those people would do with the video. I told her to think about it. Since we were doing this on Zoom, I could block her image and her name. All that would be available to viewers would be her voice and the work, as displayed on the whiteboard.
I spent a good part of the day looking for and formulating a consent/release form for the mom to sign. Hopefully, it will be enough.
I got hold of Tom from Acoustic Surroundings during the morning to ask him if the acoustical padding I had put down had been destroyed when Scott top screwed in 500 + screws through the carpeting to secure the subflooring. Yep. It has been destroyed. I would have to replace it.
I told Tom our plans to pull up the carpeting and underpadding and then rip up the replace the subflooring. The theory is a) the plywood had delaminated, and/or b) the joists were of uneven height, causing the subflooring to dip and squeak in those spots. He recommended that Scott use both liquid nails and then screw the subflooring down on top of that.
Tom told me that my product was 5 mm thick. He recommended their 9mm padding. It was more expensive, naturally. I called the local company to determine how much it would cost to replace the padding through them. He also recommended that the acoustical padding be glued down. They sell that glue comes in 5-gallon buckets. Can you imagine shipping that mother to Hawaii? OMG! I hope I can find something that will work.
I also called Kaiser. Yesterday I got a flyer telling me of changes to Medicare Part B. It only affected me in relatively minor ways. The prescription cost was going up by a few pennies, and then out-of-pocket is going up from $3400 to $5,000. Yep! Mike's five-week hospital stay with two visits to the ICU and a personal watcher for about a week to make sure he didn't pull out the ventilator tube only cost $3400. Hopefully, I will never be in a hospital that long- ever.
I had two students today. I worked with D. He planned the lesson. He wanted to read Socks from the first page again. We still hadn't finished chapter one. I believe in the benefit of chewing language. Each paragraph, each sentence provides an opportunity to learn how language works.
D forgot a very big point. A group of three loud quarreling siblings approached Debbie and George, saying they wanted Socks. I asked him how Debbie felt about these kids. He got it dead wrong. This poor kid. He has endless memory problems. He gets in information in; he can't retrieve it.
He made mistakes as he went along with his word recognition. I decided to make notes on words he missed and use the phonemic awareness strategy I developed to reinforce accuracy. However, every time he came across a word that required work, I reminded him of the strategy that I taught him that he knew worked for him. If this was driving me nuts, imagine how it affected him.
I also worked with M. Her mother sent me the text on the Montgomery Boycott. I hate to tell you how many details I missed, allowing assumption to carry me. There were no fatal errors, but I did make assumptions that blocked my reading a passage accurately. I told her what mistakes I had made.
I passed the Verbal GRE with a score of 760 out of 800 and got straight As in grad school. I'm no slouch. I am sure some readers would not make the mistakes I made, but I can say that my reading is good enough. I try to teach the students if I catch some information that contradicts my assumption, I need to go back and change my interpretation. I share information about my errors with students and the strategy for correcting those errors.
I directed the lesson to get her to think of herself in situations similar to the characters and make inferences. The first sentence is about the 'bright bedroom light' going on. I asked her how the light went on. She talked about a fan going on turning on the light. I had to pull a sensible answer out of her even though it wound up that her mother did when she got her up; she flipped on her bedroom light and told her to get up.
M. does a remarkable job working from words, but she can't use her background knowledge even when easily available. I spoke to her directly about this observation after listing all her strengths. She said she noticed that problem too.
In the middle of the lesson, she said, "I'm going to guess . . . "I have never heard her say that before. I wonder if her real problem is that she is afraid to make inferences because she is afraid of being wrong. That would be easy to fix. I asked her how her reading in school was going. She says they haven't done any reading. Ow!
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