Monday, January 16, 2023

 Monday, January 16, 2023

    I got up around 7, after waking up well before my alarm went off at 5:30. I started the in-bed exercises almost immediately, dozing off between sets.

   I walked a new route this morning. It was a longer route. I walked to the end of Kukuna and then made the right on Paiaha St. I thought I would walk all the way to Hiolani before I could find a road to Nehiwa. That was not the case. I came to ‘Ilau and cut through. This was the route Mike used to walk. I had never done it before.

   I did work on the blog and updates and some gardening. I had an appointment with Adolescent D at 2 pm. I asked him if he wanted to work on the letter perception exercise I developed or go right to reading. He chose the letter exercise.

  I write the letters v-e-r-y slowly with a broad line on the Zoom Shared Screen. I don’t know if it helps with anything, specifically letter perception, but it is relaxing. D finds it that way, too. I only did a few words. Then we switched to reading the book Investing for Young Adults, which D is passionately interested in. It was a tough slough today. He made endless errors. He read very few words smoothly. He couldn’t remember words he had read a line or two before. It was grueling – at least for me. There were some good moments when he used the strategies I taught him, and they worked. I’m not usually impatient with students- except for eighth-grade K, which is why I had to drop him.

   At 4 pm, I had the M & W sisters. Sixth grade W had almost straight As on her last report card. Yesterday, I checked if she needed anything. Making a fuss over a B in English didn’t make sense. She seems just as happy not to work with me. Second-grade M was another matter. I could see she was in a bad place right away. She wouldn’t admit to her mood, no less allow me to comfort her.

    I continued working on double-digit addition. M was getting worse instead of better. She was adding things up wrong and messing up the addition procedure. The only thing she got right consistently was the expanded notation. She wouldn’t let me help her. She shut down more and more. It was a very upsetting situation. I didn’t know what was bothering her. There is a possibility I caused this turnaround.

   Last week, I said something about her being left back. She said she stayed back because of Covid. Her mother told me it was because of her memory problems. Ow! Is this what has upset her? I both hope it is and is not. I would hate to be the cause of this upset. But if this is the problem, I may be able to fix it. I can tell her the story of another student who repeated first grade who I started working with when he was in second grade. When he was a freshman in high school, he was first in his class at the end of the year. He was shocked. A story like that will give her hope about her own potential.

   On the other hand, she often says strange things. Today, she told me the rest of the family was packing to go to Oahu. She has school tomorrow. Why is she going to Oahu? It is possible. There may be some family issues requiring her to be there.