Friday, December 23, 2022

 Friday, December 23, 2022

   I was up at 5:30 when my alarm went off; that was not when I got up. I lay in bed doing my morning exercises and dozing. I was surprised when I finally got out of the house. It was close to 7:30. 

  I had an 8:30 Zoom appointment with Mama K's crew. She signed in on time this morning. I started with fourth grade K. I tested his recall of rounding, asking him to round one number to the nearest 10 and another to the nearest 100. He did well with both. 

  Then, I reviewed what we had covered yesterday: addition and subtraction with regrouping. Oh, boy. He reverted to 'borrowing' from the tens to add it to the ones to solve an addition problem. Nothing we had done yesterday stuck. When confronted with 52-45=, I discovered he wanted to subtract the two from the five in the one's column. I showed him 2+8= and 8+2=. Are they the same? Yes. Then I wrote 5-2= and 2-5 equals. Are they the same? Yes. Oh, boy, a fourth-grade boy who doesn't get this. I said, "If your mom wants to buy something that costs five dollars. Does she have enough money?" No! She can't take five dollars from two. How does this boy's mind work? How do I get these concepts through to him and resolve his confusion?

  I was beginning to understand why he had trouble learning in class. He could do the work at the moment by just following the directions. But he couldn't retain it. He sees ambiguity or contradictions at some unconscious level. I have to address those issues before he can retain the information. He had no idea what he was confused about. It was up to me, the teacher, to figure it out for him. I love working with kids like that. I get to see the ordinary and straightforward in extraordinary and complex ways. It's one reason I love teaching children who have trouble learning. I learn so much.

  Next, I had Twin E. She is the twin with the memory problem. I started her Carpenter #7 story. She struggled with decoding all the words. I decided to concentrate on automatic recall. I only pointed to the words I thought she would know in the story. She could name words like she, it, at, that, was, and very. Getting her to the point where she could recognize very took months, but it happened. Then I asked, "What's your sister's name?" That came up automatically. "That's what it feels like when you remember words automatically. You don't have to think about it. It's as if someone told you the word." I gave her the word there. She did something different. She closed her eyes and focused. She recalled it. It just came up as it should. This would be a game-changer.

  Then I had Twin A; she is the better reader. She read the pre-primer story Spring and Fall. She was in third grade and struggling to read at this level. She didn't have problems with comprehension.

  I had second-grade M immediately afterward. Yesterday, when asked what 900 was less than 100, she answered 90. Today, I started having her count forwards and backward by 10s up to 100 and by 100s up to 1000. Then, I reviewed subtracting any number by 10 or 100. She did well. We'll see how she holds up in our next session.

  At the end of the day, I had a session with Jana, a volunteer tutor with Step Up Tutoring. She asked me to mentor her. She is the only person who has understood the value of the methods I have developed enough to consider them worthwhile pursuing. Other tutors have used them and had success. Jana wants to be a professional tutor in LA. They make a good living.

  B stopped by and asked if he could drive my car to his area to unload the cement wedges for the gravestones and power wash them. He brought them back up in his truck with his grandson Elijah and his friend Seth. The two boys unloaded the wedges onto a dolly B had brought up. I stored them under the eve to dry before I painted them. 

  I tried out my new four-inch chainsaw. I lubricated it first. I cut down a bush branch that blocked my access to the stump left of the twenty-foot haole koa I had cut down and was trying to kill with regular boiling water applications. The chainsaw worked. I could handle it without jeopardizing my life.