Tuesday, April 5, 2022

 Tuesday, April 5, 2022  

    I did it again. I woke up around 3 and spent the rest of the night agonizing. I dozed off now and then. It was not like I was meditating. I tried that. I'd doze off, and those thoughts would take control. I did get something out of it. A greater understanding of another person's point of view. That's something.

   I called the Kia parts department and spoke to the same young woman I talked to yesterday. I told her the results of my research. Disconcerting at best. The only charger I could find working on my car only tolerates 110 V.  My home has 220. I put the young woman from that department on a search, even though I had already emailed Megear myself. I was scared. Could my 2018 be obsolete already? Would I not find a replacement part? I was glad I was doing this now instead of when I was in need. 

  My blog stats were high, but there was not one German visitor. Germany had been my highest source of visitors daily since January. By highest, I mean over 100 daily. Suddenly, they all disappeared completely, and I saw those high numbers from Indonesia. I've seen this pattern before. It further proved that these are English language learners assigned to read my blog. Their teacher spends time in Germany and Indonesia. They travel back and forth. I posted an entry asking someone to tell me why they read it. The only "comments ' I've gotten are ads for gambling. I deleted those. I don't want to support that.

   I often think about my relationship with Mike. While there were things about him that aggravated me, for the most part, his failings amused me, much the way a young child's failings can be amusing. I don't mean I laughed at him with contempt. I laughed with joy and love in my heart. I don't think he always saw it that way. No male wants to evoke laughter. I thought he was adorable. 

    Thinking about my troubled relationships, I got the image of creating colored strips to represent my feelings about them and their feelings about me. There are three main categories:  things I like about them, those I tolerate, and those I hate. The three interact. It can soften our negative responses to things we don't like if we like some other quality enough. If the things we like about someone are thin, pale, or weak, we are more easily irritated by what we don't like about them. I thought more about how people felt about me. One person had a thin but bright yellow strip representing something they liked a lot about me. It mostly had to do with how I supported them. But that wasn't enough to compensate for everything they disliked about me. 

      Every other Tuesday afternoon, there is a gathering of tutors from the Step Up Tutoring program. This is the third session I have participated in. The participation was much greater today than it had been. The host, Ethan, didn't appear. I took charge and asked if there was anyone who had any questions. I gave my answer. Then Najus gave another solution. She solved a problem I hadn't heard anyone else propose. The student and the tutor could look at the material the student got in school simultaneously. I wasn't sure I could duplicate it. The student held the written work up to the camera. Najus ' pinned' it and took a screenshot. Then she could share it through Zoom.  

   Ethan eventually came on. Most of the tutors are from the LA area or somewhere in CA; he was temporarily in DC. There had been a blackout. He started by having all the tutors introduce themselves. Then he presented some material and asked if anyone had any questions.   I only realized at the end of the session that at least twenty people were on Zoom. I only saw four people besides myself. Techno inadequate.

   Someone asked how to get children who put down any answer in a multiple-choice assignment without reading it to slow down. Ethan recommended having someone sit there to make the child behave. I said I didn't favor the bullying method, not that I hadn't used it. I suggested breaking down the task into smaller units. Therefore, the student must perform that activity and skip to the answer. I also pointed out that people generally prefer to use unconscious processing, the" thinking fast' method, over conscious processing, the "thinking slow" method. People will ask, "Why do you have to make everything so complicated?" They resist conscious thought. Modern-day good students have to utilize conscious processing.  

   We need to use conscious processing when we learn something unfamiliar. The degree of unfamiliarity determines how much we have to use conscious thought. When we learn something new, we experience a degree of disorientation. For the good learner, this triggers feelings of anticipation. "Oh, yay. I'm going to learn something new. How exciting!" For the poor learner, this disorientation triggers confusion, "Oh, no. I don't know what to do in this situation. I'm in danger." Of course, this isn't all learner dependent. I assure you the best learner in Ukraine is experiencing disorientation in negative terms right now. It's a two by two.

How does this look?

	Very different from usual circumstances	No change from usual circumstances.
High tolerance for disorientation
Low tolerance for disorientation

                        

    Poor students have a low tolerance for even slight variations in their world, any uncertainty. A student may be an excellent language learner and poor at math. We have a higher tolerance for disorientation and error at whatever we're good at. This explains why a lot of poor students do brilliantly with Fortnight. They aren't afraid of failing or feeling disorientation. Something new is fun, a challenge rather than a threat.

      I had a session with adolescent D. We continued with the driver's manual. We always start with the first item. He still had problems remembering all those words, particularly the pronunciation of -tion. He had serious memory problems. He said he thought his problem was a lack of attention. I didn't think that was entirely wrong. By my perception, his memory impulse was 'weak' or 'thin .'Or that's how it felt to me. The impulse to deliver the memory started but didn't move very far. It never reached the receptive part of the brain that could translate that information into something he could recognize, like the word. How to strengthen it? I got the image of a propulsion machine pushing the memory forward. Vroom!! Vroom like a motorcycle. That did something. It would be fantastic if that worked. I've had images like this before. They just come to mind. They probably come to the mind of others, but they reject them because they are bizarre. I have a high tolerance for making a total fool of myself. This frees me to use these images. Why not? The only question is, "Can it do harm?" 

    Mike Berstene got back to me about Mike's book. I wrote him before asking what was going on, and he never got back to me. I suspected he wasn't having much luck selling Mike's book and didn't want to tell me. I wrote him that I didn't think it was very good. It was 75% overwritten. Sandor told me that is the style in the field of Catholic religious studies. Tedious. Yes, indeed. Despite his reputation in the area, Mike's book had already received several rejections. Mike Berstene said he had just retired from the work he had been doing with my Mike for the Josephinum, and he would have more time to devote to Mike's book. I want to publish it even if it means self-publishing through Amazon. He put a lot of work into this project. As always, I want what's best for him.