Monday, August 9, 2021

 Monday, August 9, 2021

 

      I had sixth grade D in the morning. His reading has improved dramatically. He can automatically process most words. Amazing. He may still need more practice in decoding multi-syllable words. I thought it was time to consider working on other academic skills. I asked him about his writing. He said it was okay. He just couldn’t write a lot on a single topic. That may mean he is several years behind where he should be. I’ll have to see. Also, he said his handwriting was a mess. I figured out how to teach letter formation on Zoom. Of course, I can’t check body mechanics. I may have to have his mom make a video of him writing and text it to me.

     At the end of the class, I asked him how he felt about reading now at a rate of 1-10. He said a 7. I asked him how he felt when we started. He said a 4. Lovely!

      I had reading support office hours for the Step Up Tutoring program tutors. There was just one woman. She hadn’t had much experience tutoring, wasn’t sure what she was doing, and seemed quite uncomfortable with the prospect. She told me her student was going into sixth grade and was very bright, but she had no information on what she needed. She wanted to be able to do an evaluation. It finally came out that her student was in a gifted program. I told her she didn’t need an evaluation. If she was in a gifted program, it was for either reading/language arts or math. Since she did know the student had no problems with math, it had to be reading. If she was in a gifted program, she had to be at least one or two years ahead of her grade level; otherwise, she wouldn’t be in that program. She didn’t need an evaluation. 

      I think she hoped that an evaluation would provide her with exact information. It doesn’t. Most just determine reading level and the nature of the problem: word recognition or comprehension. They are not more precise than that, particularly at the higher levels. I kept telling her to ask her student what she needed. She kept harking back to wanting a tool for evaluating her needs. I tried to tell the woman that I would be as baffled as she was with a new student. I don’t know what the student’s needs are right away. The higher the level of performance, the longer it takes to determine that. She didn’t like the solution of, “Just ask.” 

        She told me her student said she didn’t like math. I told her to ask the student when her dislike of math started. If she said she was below third grade, she probably had a problem with basic number sense; if it was after, the problem was learning the multiplication facts or, more likely, the algorithms or figuring out what operation to use in problem-solving. There was some talk about working on percentages in math. I showed her my triangle showing the relationship between all fractions, decimal fractions, and percentages. All fractions are on the bottom of the triangle, the fat part.   That’s because the number of possible denominators is infinite. You can have any number for the denominator. There are fewer possibilities for the decimal fraction segment; it is smaller. Here you can only have denominators with a number starting with 1 with zeroes after it. However, you have an infinite number of those too. At the apex of the triangle, you have percentages. There is only one number for the denominator here, 100.

     The woman fell silent. She wasn’t interested in my terrific triangle. She was interested in the whiteboard. I gladly showed her how to get the whiteboard in Zoom. I also showed her how to share Internet screens on her computer. I brought up the NY Times Crossword Puzzle as an example. For this, she thanked me. Good enough. I hope she calms down and trusts herself. She was a bright woman with many skills to share. 

       Adolescent D’s mother texted me asking if we were scheduled for today. No, but I could accommodate him. I always give him a choice of things to work on: the sight word sentences (sentences I have written that give the student the opportunity to practice words they confuse or don’t know yet), the 2nd-grade material I used with sixth-grade D, or the higher-level work on the seventh-grade level. He chose the sight word sentences. I told him to trust himself. Go for the work that seemed most comfortable. That would inevitably be the most effective.   

       When I asked him if he saw improvement in his reading due to our work on Saturday, he said no. However, when he read through the sentences, he was moving more rapidly. I had him read the sentences out of order so he couldn’t memorize them. If he memorized each sentence, he would lapse and not use bottom-up perception. He would focus on what was in his head instead of on the paper.  

      D did better than usual for most of the sentences. He either read accurately or caught his own mistakes. This is great. Then he started making mistakes like mad. I could see he lapsed and started using top-down processing. My first response was to tell him he just had to discipline himself to use the bottom-up processing. The overuse of top-down processing was his compensation for his word recognition problems. A good reader uses both equally.

    Later that night, I realized I had been wrong. He hadn’t gotten sloppy. He was exhausted. He was working as hard as he could, following my directions and knocking it out of the park. Then he got tired and fell back on his old method because he couldn’t do it anymore. Think of going on a long hike. You start using your body energetically and efficiently. Then you get tired. You can’t use your core muscles anymore. You drag yourself instead of propelling yourself over the rocks. D got tired. I owe him an apology, an acknowledgment for how well he did do as long as he could. We have to work out some response when he gets that tired. I can take over and just model; he can relax and go along for the ride. If I push him, he is bound to fall back on his old strategy, which we don’t want to encourage right now.

        I discover Longmire on Netflix. Ah! It’s a mystery. Not quite Murder She Wrote but close. Actually, quite a bit better.        

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Musings:

          I learned that conservative people believe people become gay or transgender only by being exposed to people like that. I can’t imagine anyone choosing such a radical deviation from a social norm or even from their parents’ expectation on a lark to follow a fad. However, I can’t disagree that seeing it in others makes adopting it more possible. 

        I know now that I’m psychic. It was not an acceptable option when I was young. I had to come up with some other explanation when people told me they thought I was reading their minds. No, no. I’m very sensitive to movement or some such excuse. It wasn’t until I was in my fifties that a friend forced me to come to terms with it. What a difference it made in my life! Do you mean these feelings I was having weren’t all mine? You mean there is a way to shield myself from the energy of others? Do you mean I can feel their feelings and not have to do something about it because they are theirs? I couldn’t deal with the reality of my ability until I met others who had made their peace with theirs.

    Similarly, people who feel they can’t conform to the cisgender category suffer. They know something is different. They feel their discomfort. They have no idea how to seek relief- until they see someone else living that life. So, in that sense, those conservatives are right. Sadly, they don’t want peace for their children.