Tuesday, July 20, 2021
I had a wonderful night's sleep- no troubling thoughts. Thank God I have some good days.
Running into folks as I walk is always a treat. Each person who says hello or chats with me for a few minutes affirms my existence. It doesn't take much. I don't need a great deal from these loose relationships. However, for me, a more extended relationship requires some system for resolving differences. I can't imagine a situation where some point of difference or conflict does not come up over time. This is what makes the difference between a friendship and a casual relationship. I have met people who argue that you should never have to talk to work something out if you get along with someone. As far as I know, that is only possible if both accept one person as the voice of total authority and the way a senior officer is in the military. I don't like to live that way. I wouldn't want to be in either role.
K worked in a concentrated way on the writing activity. He responded very well to the repetition of the familiar, as do the twins. I had him write his first and last names every day. Initially, this took him a long time. With each repetition, the activity took less time. I introduced the word brown today. He wrote it separately after he had written "the fox jumps over the dog." I didn't have him use a capital T to start the sentence because I was still working on the lower case letters. When he wrote brown, he sounded out the word; then spelled it borown. The good news was we could discuss it, and he happily made the necessary correction.
I continued working on the letters and word families with the Twins. I had Twin E first. Again she raised her eyes to her eyebrows when asked her to see her blanket in her mind. I called her mom, saying I needed her help. In the past, I have written the words on students' foreheads to help them 'see' words in their minds. Doing so requires writing backward. Mom K was going to have to practice.
When I had Twin E, I decided to try BrainManagementSkills with her. She told me her blanket was yellow. When I asked her to 'see' the blanket in her mind, she closed her eyes instead of looking upwards as her sister had. What a surprise! She had stronger metacognitive skills than her sister. I had her write letters on the blanket, and she is the one who is behind in memorizing the letters of the alphabet. Enough for today.
I have known about the girls' memory problems since kindergarten, and now they're about to enter second grade. I am unwilling to do BrainManagementSkills with very young children. It doesn't feel right. I will not teach preschool children to read; I don't recommend that my audio file with phonemic transcription be used on very young children. I'm concerned it will push them to left-brain strengths before fully exploring right-brain development. I am on Waldorf's side; no child under seven should be taught to read. If there are problems, then they should be dealt with later. Unfortunately, Waldorf does not do that. This summer, I have had two students that went through Walldorf and had trouble reading, the two Ds I had been working with. Both needed BrainManagementSkills to resolve their problems.
Before I headed out to the Post Office after my session with sixth-grade D., I called the church. I was told that Fr. Lio had the name of someone who did cement work. I need a cement' pillow' to support the granite plaques I ordered. Susan had the number at hand. A few minutes after I hung up, I got a call from someone who worked in the office who had been a friend of Mike's. She said she had the name of someone to do the engraving. I was told it was hard to get someone to do that work here. The woman who used to do it retired, and the person who took over her job was impossible to get hold of. I was concerned it was the same person, but no. Wonderful! The woman who called me got another phone call she had to take. She said she would call me back.
I needed help at the Post Office carrying the four boxes with Jean's father's book to mail to her friend. I flagged down a fifty-year-old woman who helped me. Unfortunately, I had to take one home to repack. I used a Priority Mail box. I had scribbled over the marking identifying it as priority. The clerk said it wasn't enough. If I sent it priority, it would cost me over twenty dollars. If I repacked it, it would cost me eight. I took it home.
As I left the Post Office, the woman from the church office called back. I called her name, saying, "I'm driving!" She kept on talking. I must have said it two more times. Then I switched to, "Can you hear me?" I have had this problem with others who ramble on and are unresponsive to the sound of my voice. Still no answer. I finally yelled, "Can you hear the sound of my voice?" I got through. When she heard I was driving, she said she would text me the information. Perfect.! As she hung up, I heard her say, "She is so funny . . . . ." I wondered if she was having hearing problems.
I went to Target next. I needed more doggie bags and a USB cord. The one I had no longer worked. They only had 6-footers, too long for my purpose. I had to order a short one online. It would be here in a few days. After Target, I stopped off at Kaiser. My doctor said she wanted a blood sample to see how my cholesterol was doing, given that Hersey's milk chocolate kisses with almonds is one of my primary food sources. Ha! Ha!
I had an appointment with J. I worked on reading the Barnell Loft, Getting the Main Idea level G, seventh grade. It is a complicated language. I can hear more clearly how J struggles with expressing himself in English. He may, however, have the same problem in Spanish. I used a careful analysis of each sentence and the relationship of each sentence to all the others. He did better than he had done. There were moments when he didn't correctly use the information in the text but tried to make up something that made sense. Teaching students when to infer versus when to use the given information is challenging. They can't discern the difference. When he had to answer the comprehension question, he didn't have a good overview. I had to diagram the answer. When I did a second passage with J, it went more quickly. I teach students that language is a puzzle. You have to figure out how the pieces go together.
I sent Dorothy an acupuncture pen like the one Yvette lent me. She told me she used it on her glute muscles, and it helped. She said she was a little confused because she could feel the electronic stimulation in her hand as well as her glute. I told her that was how it worked. Both ends of the pen must contact some part of you to complete the circuit.
I have been using the pen on my leg, but it hadn't occurred to me to use it on my glutes. Today I used it on my lower back and finally on the saddlebag muscles sitting on top of my hips. Lo and behold, when I applied the pen to the muscles on my right side, it relieved the discomfort on the left side. I know this is possible, but I hadn't explored it enough.
I received a notification from Tesla on my phone to reduce my electric use because my solar system had so much trouble charging the batteries. "No, Tesla. It's not what I'm doing; it's what the sky is doing." We have sunlight in the morning, and it starts raining at about 11, and the sky is dark at noon when we can expect the most intense sunlight. Great!
The stats for the visitors on my blog are low. However, they are never down to zero or one as they used to be.
I found The Chosen, the story of Christ's life, on YouTube. I found the introduction annoying. The guy sounded like he was on uppers. His excitement was okay; his rambling and repetition didn't sound right. I watched it for a while. I thought it was well done, very professional. I just found it too scary. The Roman soldiers have so much contempt for the Jews. I can hear advocates saying, "That is how it was." Oh, I know. I can't watch contempt and cruelty even in a fictional movie. In this case, I knew what would happen to the main character. Very upsetting.
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