Wednesday, March 10, 2021
In my last session with my acupuncturist, she reminded me that the spine should go through its full range of motion with every step. I figured out how to get the backbend by leaning back, holding my head up straight instead of looking at the ground, and allowing my head a little backward bounce at the last moment. I can feel the impact on my spine. However, I couldn't figure out how to get that lower back forward curl with each step. I could create it on my right side but not my left. Today I figured out, again, I'm sure, that I get that forward curl by raising my knees as I walk. With each step, I use my abdominal muscles to lift the leg. Wow! Talk about muscle strain.
It has come to my attention that while my weight has remained the same, my waist has gained an inch to an inch and a half. Damn! While I get in my 10,000 steps a day and my yoga three times a week, I also spend a lot of time sitting on my duff.
I started rereading the article on my reading method I had been working on before my attention was kidnapped by the PowerPoint presentation for the Step-Up Tutoring program. Now that's done, I can bring my attention back to the article and then the book. Today, I wanted to check out the slide show I designed to be the Phonics Discovery System audio file's visual feature. Because Tommy and I decided to use the first slide from the Step-Up PowerPoint presentation as a logo, sort of, I wanted to use it as the title slide for this slide show too. It didn't match the design I had used.
I noticed that PowerPoint offered me suggestions for designs that were compatible with the design I had selected. Wow! The PowerPoint I put together is glitzy and effective. I love it. I made some modifications to the text. Mainly I distributed what I had already written over more slides. Now I have to set up the Facebook page and figure out how to make the audio file transcript available through the site. Then I'll be ready to rock and roll.
I had D. at 11:30. Another problem; he hadn't charged the fire tablet. Could we do the session on his mom's phone? That's what we had used originally; it was workable. He reads well when it comes automatically, but he does not use the skills I have taught him when he stumbles. Look for the vowels? "T." Really? Is T a vowel? I think this relates to his memory problems. Then he read a u as an n. Yes, it flipped over. "Does the visual distortion happen on the page or in your head?" In his head. Do you know how many times I have asked him that over the last year and a half? I asked him why he didn't tell me that before. "I don't know." I can believe that, but it does suggest a more complex psychological cause than has been apparent.
It wound up he was using the wrong part of his brain. I show him how to do something correctly effectively, and he doesn't follow through. It drives me nuts. I am way more reactive with him than I should be. His comprehension has improved somewhat. It's his word recognition strategies that are still in the toilet.
I had a conference with Julia A from Step-Up Tutoring. We talked about the PowerPoint; how long should the break-out rooms be? I couldn't set up the Zoom through Step-Up at my end. She hosted the meeting. As we talked, I saw something I had left out, "Always use standard English spelling."
I caught a nap before my 2 pm class with M. M. is progressing rapidly as far as I'm concerned. Her mom says she sees no difference in her conservation. I see her doing so much better. I have been skipping items and moving ahead rapidly. I started with material designed for the 3rd grade. We struggled with the first two or three exercises. Then she took off. We will be moving into the 5th grade level in our next class. I spent the time between my session with M and my upcoming session with J at 3 pm typing up some of the passages from that 5th grade Barnell Loft, Drawing Conclusions text for my next class with M.
J's sister, Ju, was present at the start of the session. Ju made it clear that he didn't get praise from his teacher for his work. J says his grades are better, still 2s and 3s instead of 4s, but more 3s- or so he says.
When we started working together, he was enthusiastic about the sessions, contacting me if I was a few minutes late. While he is still cooperative about time, he seems less cooperative about the work. I thought maybe he felt he was doing well enough. I was disappointed to hear this was not the case. I wondered if I had had any positive impact. He said yes, in math. Huh? We worked extensively on reading too. How come that didn't make a dent in his skills?
I put my foot down. I insisted he work on a class assignment. He would have it done in time, but I could use the work to teach. I asked him if he created images as he read. He said no. In one paragraph, I covered visualization, anaphor, and compare and contrast. The exercise required him to write answers to questions. His answers weren't bad, just incomplete. His writing improved considerably by adding a few words and dropping a few ands. It's hard for the Spanish to adapt to the English verbal style. And- is their favorite word, creating one long run-on sentence in English, we don't use it as much. Each language has its own idea of 'correct' sentence structure. On a positive note, when he came across a multi-syllabic word he didn't recognize, he applied the decoding strategy I taught him. Made me feel like a million bucks!
I found a documentary on Bob Fosse's life. I learned that he developed his choreography to suit his own body. He had tight hips, so he avoided movements that required side leg extensions and introduced dance with the legs turned in. That made me laugh. I have the same problem. When I was in my forties, someone said to me jokingly that I should develop my own dance style based on my turned-in feet and call it Betty's Dance Style. Ha! Ha! Guess Fosse beat me to it.
While his hips were tight, Ann Reinking had the loosest hips ever. I just found out she had flexible hips because of a genetic disease, Marfan's, which left people with super loose muscle tone. However, I remember Gwen Verdon saying that Ann could launch a jump from a standing posture. That requires great strength. Reinking was my model for how the hips should work. There's a scene in All That Jazz where she is doing a duet with a twelve-year-old, who I believe is Fosse and Verdon's daughter. The contrast between the two is startling. Reinking's legs look like they are being controlled by puppeteers' strings; the young girls like their being cranked up with a crane. Now, to find out that Reinking's magic resulted from disease. Oh, well.
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