Thursday, August 26, 2021

 Thursday, August 26, 2021

 

       I'm in waiting mode. I volunteered to mentor 12 step-up tutors in two groups of six each; Judy passed my name on to a friend on Oahu who may contact me; Mama K gave my name to someone, and I anticipated clients who 'took the summer off to come back. In addition, I have been struggling with making modifications to my video. I finally wrote a script and had been rehearsing and revising over and over. 

       I had to stop listening to NRP; they're overly excited about events in Afghanistan. What's going on there is tragic, but I don't see how hourly updates, if not more frequently, help anyone. I felt the way did when 9/11 occurred. I did not watch the scene repeatedly—those who did suffer from PSTD. 

      I know Biden and company knew the Taliban would gain control. I think they estimated it would take a month; it didn't. It can't be just the US that was surprised by the turn of events; the Taliban must have been shocked too. I heard a speaker on NPR who expressed my thoughts. It's easier to lead an uprising than to lead a country at peace. The Taliban had no plans in place to run the country. In addition, there are competing rebel factions running around. They all hate each other as much as they do the US. None of this eliminates the possibility of suicide bombers launching attacks in other countries, in the US and Europe, as we have already seen. This is total chaos. It doesn't take more than a few determined men in a small town to take control and enforce Sharia law.

    I only had a tutoring session with A today. He was at his father's office. The last two sessions have been there. Before this, he was always at home on Zoom; his father must be back in the office. I wonder how long this is going to last.  

      I gave A a choice between the sight word list, the sight word sentences, and the 2nd-grade material. He chose the sight word sentences. He immediately ran into problems remembering the difference between her and here. When I asked A about the difference between the two words, his mind went blank. I asked him if there was spinning in the brain's visual or auditory areas. He said no on both counts. Then, I asked if his mind skipped tracks. He said yes to this. Adolescent D's mind does the same thing. I asked if he was afraid he'd give the wrong answer. He said yes to this. Ah!! I bet this is adolescent D's problem, too, particularly since he needs to be perfect.  

      I worked with A, releasing fear. I had him release anything bad about his hatred of his fear and keep anything positive or anything he still needed. As he did, I told him to imagine hearing someone screaming on a roller coaster ride. When I asked him if this made him feel more relaxed or tenser, he said he was more relaxed. I considered that a sign he was doing something helpful. I asked him if he liked the fear. He said no, but he was laughing. I asked him what he was laughing about. He said his older brother was making him laugh. "Hello, S," I called out. He responded. I don't know if it is helpful or hurtful that his brother is there. I would think it would make him more nervous, but his laughter seemed relaxed.  

   When I asked him the difference between here and here, he immediately said that here had an extra e. I had him perform the same exercise I had D do the other day. He said, "Here has an extra e; her does not have an extra e." I had him just read each instance of her or here in the sentences, describing the difference. He did that several times. Then he read a few sentences. When he came across here, he read it correctly. When I asked him how he knew, he said, "I just know." While that was not incorrect, he didn't remember or think to articulate the difference between the two words.

     From what I read in Dahaene's book Consciousness and the Brain, I was more convinced that good reading is dependent on attention to detail. Not conscious attention to detail but trained heightened awareness of detail. That's what drill is about; that's what multisensory training is about; that's what Ron Del Davis's work is about when he has students spell our function words in potter's clay. That's also what my work is about. We all approach it from slightly different perspectives. 

     My sister sent the Zoom link for my nephew's wedding today. They put this together in a week. David and Marliese were planning to have a civil wedding, but that didn't work because of Covid. They quickly planned a backyard wedding which blew up into a full-blown ceremony. David rented a suit; Marliese bought a white dress; they built a chuppah in the backyard and arranged for a rabbi to marry them. David is Jewish; Marliese is not. David's sister, Karin, sent a large bouquet to decorate the chuppah. Dorothy thought there would only be ten people at the in-person ceremony, four of them Dorothy's friends.