Thursday, October 28, 2021

 Thursday, October 28, 2021

 

     I stay up till 10 because I was so engaged in Offspring. The more I watch it, the more I like it.  It works for loving resolutions without being melodramatic.  There is often a comic edge, sometimes subtly.  I think it’s very good.  

     The alarm went off. I wondered why it didn’t sound like my usual morning alarm.  I had hoped to have a little more sleep. Today was driveway yoga at 7 am; I had to get up in a timely way. When I looked at the clock, it was 11:50 pm.  I had meant to set the alarm for 11:50 am, time to get ready for my 12 pm zoon meeting with one of the tutors in my cohort of new tutors.  I had push pm instead of am.  I had six more hours of sleep. Great! 

     Today, Colin was walking Angus and Bailey together. Angus has to lose some weight. When he does, maybe he will be able to keep up with Bailey.  I have to watch out with Bailey; he wants to jump up and put his front paws on my shoulders. He could knock me over easy peasy. 

    When I posted the daily blog entry, I saw my numbers were back up in general and specifically in Indonesia. That English teacher must have a new batch of students. Yesterday it was 117; when he’s not assigning my blog, the numbers are down to 5 or 7 a day. Five or seven a day is still better than it was when I started when the numbers ran from zero to two.  By the way, since I started the blog, I have passed 10,000 hits.  Many are repeats. 

  At noon, I spoke to the new tutor, a young man with an advanced degree in electrical engineering who worked as a teaching assistant while was working for his degree.  He was quite nervous about meeting this third grader from a Latino family who was having trouble in school.  I recommended the structured question format which the other tutor recommended.  I also told him that working with a young child from an uneducated family would be quite a change for him.  The cognitive style of Latino families that came from small towns with collective cultures is very different from the complex thinking he was used to. In those cultures, you’re expected to do what you’re told without question. There isn’t a variety way of doing things. Everyone does things basically the same way. This young man had to gear up for culture shock.  I shared my opinion that neither way is “better.”  We have lost connection with our ‘sophisticated’ culture.  To work with these kids, you have to keep an open mind, appreciating what their lifestyle has to offer. I told him to stay open as he worked with his student. He had a lot to learn. 

     I had third grade A in the afternoon.  He continues to show improvement.  I plan to have him work in third grade material.  He gets most of the single syllable words correct. He just doesn’t know how to decode multi-syllable words.  I have him read the word if he can. If he can’t, I do and have him identify all the vowels in the word when write on the shared screen below the text.  Then have him add on the consonants, blending their sounds with the vowels. Once the word has been identified, I go back and apply Phase I, articulating each sound in the word. We also worked on writing another story. 

   I had an encounter today with a body worker who blamed me for something that went wrong in our work four times.  I didn’t notice the first two until I told  her twice that she was hurting me and she not only ignored my complaint but stated she was doing it correctly. My pain was irrelevant. I’m not sitting here nursing the resulting injury.  I don’t think this relationship is going to work.