Wednesday, August 25, 2021

 Wednesday, August 25, 2021

 

     Every morning, I post a blog entry from my updates one year behind to the day. This entry will be sent to those on my email list today and to the blog on August 25, 2022. I reread each entry and ran it through Grammarly before posting it. I also checked the stats on the blog each morning. Recently, they have been low, under ten, as low as four but never zero or even one. Watch tomorrow will be the exception.

   I had a session with sixth-grade D. We've been working on his verbal expression skills. He said he had trouble writing a long piece. In other words, he had trouble developing an idea. He chose to write about body surfing with his younger brother. I asked about the experience and typed as fast as I could while he talked. When I did this, he objected, saying, "No, no. Don't include that." I told him that what he was saying was pure gold. It is these details that make what he has to say interesting. I have been very impressed with his vocabulary, complex sentences, and images. I thought we would write a simpler story, a "what happened at the beach." This is almost poetry. Today, I started organizing his sentences. There was the introduction, the waiting for the wave, riding the wave, and the aftermath of completing the ride. We discovered he hadn't said anything about actually riding the wave. All his attention was on waiting for the wave.

     I wrote a title and asked him his last name. He could say it but didn't know how to spell it. Huh? How is it possible that an 11-year-old boy doesn't know what to spell his last name? It's a simple six-letter Spanish name. After analyzing the sounds in words from the 2nd-grade text, which he did well, I dictated those words to him. He spelled them all correctly until we hit the word ball. He tried to spell it boll. Good try! One could read the word ball spelled that way. He remembered the correct spelling when I told him it wasn't right. I showed him the word all was buried in the word ball.   

     I asked him if this spelling was better, worse, or the same. He said worse. I was surprised since he told me he had trouble spelling, but he correctly spelled most of the words. Then he said he usually didn't sound out the words. That's what he did to figure out how to spell these words, and he did well. I'm not sure why he thought his spelling was worse this way. We will have to investigate.

      I worked on my application to tutor for Kealakehe Intermediate school. They wanted references. My last job was in the Licking Heights Local Schools, teaching ESL six years ago. One of the principals I worked under is still there. I added a slip of paper listing my volunteering for Kealakehe Elementary school. I'm sure the teachers will give me a good reference.

     At two pm, I had Mama K's crew. I called her before class. I wanted to know if she had prepared the work for K's writing activity. I asked her to write the words on a piece of primary lined paper for K to copy. She had done that. I also asked her how K was doing in school. He had trouble paying attention the year before; the teachers constantly called his name to focus his attention. She said she hadn't heard from the teachers. Is everything going well, or are they waiting a month before delivering the bad news? According to K, the teachers only call on him to answer questions; they never call him because he is not paying attention. That would be spectacular.

     Many years ago, when I observed teachers in The Lewis School in Princeton, one of the teachers told me there was a relationship between handwriting and attention. We have been working on handwriting. I have seen changes in people's ability to focus simply by having them watch while I draw a random line on a piece of paper. It's amazingly effective. It's weird.

    Next, I had Twin A. This was a tough session. She wasn't focused. She may have ADD, but a lot of this behavior is pure avoidance. I would use an avoidance strategy if someone forced me to perform an activity I had as much trouble learning as she did with the reading. I'd be out of there. Today, she struggled with every single word. Mind you; these are the same words she has seen over and over again. It's just at, and then fat, hat, lat, mat, nat, rat, and sat. That's all, folks. Notice: I'm not even using all the letters in the alphabet for the initial sound. I am only using the continuant sounds. Blending the stopped consonants is much more difficult.

     Working with the children is more challenging because the space isn't quiet. A movie may be on in the background. Eight people are living in a small space. Also, there are a lot of street noises; they live off a main roadway leading into Hilo. Nonetheless, we have made progress.

    Next, I had Twin E. She had just taken a shower after coming home from school. She did very well. The shower may have refreshed her. I wrote a few displays of three words, one of which was the word the. She had to tell me if the was number one, two, or three. She nailed them. I didn't do anything else with the sight words for today. She was already better than I anticipated.

   Then we went through all the words in the -at family. With Twin E, I use all the letters in the alphabet for the initial sounds. She rocked. I could move through the -at family quickly and go through most of the -ap family. She struggled with the latter, but I could see her listen, pay attention to her senses instead of relying on her memory. Wow!

    At the end of the session, Mama K asked to speak to me. A friend wants a tutor for her first-grade son. She gave her my email address.

     Later that afternoon, I had adolescent D. I asked him if he wanted to continue the psychological work on his need to be perfect or reading. He said he wanted to work on his perfectionism. Mostly I talked about the human condition and how we all had to learn to accept it. I am committed to my work being "Safe, comfortable, easy, fun, and effective." I told him we were working on the effective part now. If he didn't see the point of changing his point of view, there was no point in trying to change how he felt about himself.  

    I believe we all worry about being different. Some make an issue of it and wave that banner proudly. Either way, it's an issue. I think we're biologically driven to conform. I don't mean completely. But children make every effort to learn what their parents know, whether it's their language or how they hold their eating utensils. When children are not 'normal' it causes distress for the parents. 

    In a highly structured, isolated culture, people can share many characteristics. In our contemporary culture, that's not the case. We are all aware of alternatives. Not questioning the culture we're born into requires repressive restrictions from someone, the parents, the government, the religious leader, etc. Someone has to be coming down with a hard hand.  

    I told D we are all different in some way. For some of us, it's like having a pimple on our nose; others have it on their rear end, well out of sight. D has a pimple on his nose. Everyone is aware that he has problems reading. And he has a younger sister who excels in everything he has trouble with—the unkindest cut of all.

    At some point, I felt we had gone as far as we could for the day. I asked him what reading material he wanted to work on, the 8th-grade level material, the 2nd-grade level material, or the sight-word sentences I wrote that highlighted words he had trouble with. He chose the sight word sentences. The first set of sentences featured her versus here. He was still having trouble remembering the difference. The sentences provided drill for the words in context, yet he had difficulty. The first sentence was 'Here is her book,' and he got both words wrong. Whatever I had done so far hadn't worked; I needed a different tack.

   I thought of having him say the difference between the words out loud. I asked him what the difference was. "One is longer." Wow! That gave me a world of information. He is not into details. No wonder he has difficulty with reading. I asked him to give me a more detailed answer. "There are more letters in here than there are in her." Wow! again. Attention to detail is clearly a problem. There is a world of words that have more letters than her. Finally, he said, "Here has an extra e, and her doesn't have an extra e." Are these the best words? Should we have left off the negative, "Her doesn't have the extra e?" We were experimenting. Here we are using our conscious minds to rewire our nervous system; rewire our unconscious minds.

    I completed the application for the tutoring position for the Intermediate school so the school could pay me to tutor adolescent D. Matthew told me I needed to bring identification: driver's license, passport, social card, and birth certificate. All this was to prove I was a legal resident of the USA.

    I have saved all my passports. Each had a picture of me at a different stage of my life. I had been wondering when the asymmetry of my eyebrows showed. I had a chance to review it. When I was younger, it was just a slight difference. Now that I'm older, that left eyebrow droops so badly it interferes with my sight. That's how I got to see Kaiser's plastic surgeon and get a Botox injection to lift that brow. By now, the Botox has worn off, and I'm due for a second shot. However, I started using the acupuncture pen on my face and skull. It has made a huge difference. I don't know if I can repair all the damage life has done to my face, but the effect has been impressive.