Monday, February 13, 2023

 Monday, February 13, 2023

 No one signed up for my office hours through Step Up Tutoring. I checked the Office Hours tab. My Literacy Hour was not posted. I thought I had been unceremoniously dropped. It was only later that I found the email from Maria telling me they had discontinued my office hours for the time being as they were focusing exclusively on math for the duration.

      I had Adolescent D at 2 pm. I asked him if he had made an effort to write neatly. He said no, it just came out that way. It required no special effort. Wow! The tracing procedure bypassed his conscious mind and went straight to his unconscious mind. I will see if I can apply this principle to other areas where he has problems. D’s memory is very poor. More precisely, it is his short-term working memory that is poor. That’s usually the first stop for all new material. It is held there until it can be downloaded into long-term memory in the unconscious mind. I hope we can figure out how to get some phonics rules in that way.

   This modeling procedure is different from standard drills. Drill usually requires more input from the students. Cards are flashed, and they have to recall the word or the number fact. Here, the student does practically nothing. He relaxes and observes; that’s it. I have used modeling before to teach recalcitrant students. I haven’t used it as a bypass for a faulty working memory. If it does work, I will teach him to set up these ‘drills’ for himself. He would have to make a tape of him or someone else repeating the target information.

  I had first-grade M at 4 pm. We continued working on three-digit addition and subtraction with regrouping. I wanted to make sure she was secure with this work.

   I’ve been listening to Paul Bloom’s 2008 lecture course on Introduction to Psychology. He is big on evolutionary psychology. Bloom takes the selfish gene approach. We do everything to pass on our genes. All altruism is based on that.

    I heard a lecture in the 90s in a Princeton-sponsored colloquium that said people are driven by a need to see themselves as good people. Even confessed serial killers have declared they are good people who have only done bad things. Bloom did not account for our need to see ourselves in a positive light.

   The need to see ourselves as good people has its basis in survival. In another part of the lecture, Bloom described what happens to cheaters in any species. They lose the support of others, which can put their lives in danger. The freedom to ignore the opinions of our fellows is a luxury of the abundance we currently enjoy. This wasn’t always true.  

      I watched season two of The Morning Show. It was more complex than season one. Critics said its failure is that everyone is in full-bore crisis. It’s just too much. They also said the acting was incredible. It is.