Monday, January 9, 2023

 Monday, January 9, 2023

  I woke up feeling sad. I finally figured out what I could do about that. I use Vipassana to help myself, and I teach it to others. It is surprisingly effective. I often sit with my hatred of some feeling I don't like, dealing with aversion. But Buddhism teaches that craving is as much of a problem. Through S.N. Goenka, I learned that aversion was as much an issue as craving. They both indicate a feeling of dissatisfaction. Things happen that we don't want, and something we do want doesn't happen. I turned my attention to craving.

     I released anything negative about a craving for recognition for my work. It's easy to learn and teach, and often not just effective, but surprisingly so. It is painful that something so simple and cheap doesn't get into the schools. If a few teachers tried it and found it effective, they'd pass it on to other teachers. My work would be done. But this is not in the cards. And I am incapable of energetically pursuing that end. Why would I expect the work to be known if I'm unwilling to put myself out there in full force? I released anything negative about this craving and kept anything positive or anything I still needed. Nice!

   I had an appointment with Adolescent D at 2 p.m. I gave him a menu of activities to work on. He chose to practice the visual perception exercise. I form the letters slowly on the Zoom whiteboard, and he follows my lead, 'writing' the letters with his fingertip on his desktop. The last time we did this, I used cursive and manuscript letters. He said he wanted print because he didn't use cursive. The purpose of the activity is visual perception, deepening the imprint of the letters in his nervous system for improvement in letter perception. We tried both. He felt the print had a more significant impact. That's what we worked with.   

   Then, we switched to reading passages. He read third-grade material with great accuracy and speed. He started off well. Then he hit a word he had difficulty with. I am trying to remember if he recognized he had misread it or if I told him. Either way, his reading accuracy fell off dramatically after that. It was clearly a psychological response. I worked to help him calm himself. It's clear by now he can read, but he still has to use conscious effort. It doesn't just happen as it does for a good reader. "Just happening" full automaticity is on the horizon now, given all his progress. He went back to reading and made a conscious effort to pay attention to the letters in the words as he read. Wow! He decoded one-word syllable by syllable. He made me a very happy teacher.

   His mother told me he bought him a book for Christmas, "Investing for Young Adults." He said he was interested in learning more about it. This is the first time he ever received a book as a gift. The boy is fifteen years old. Before this, it would have been like giving a print book to a blind person. It would have been cruel. His mother was thrilled to see his response. First, he could read the title. Second, he was thrilled to get this book. I proposed we work on it together. He was open to that.

   At four, I had the M & W sisters. I still needed something to work on with sixth-grade W. I needed to know from her or her teacher what she needed help with. I worked with second-grade M on math. She still has trouble keeping the regrouping procedures with addition and subtraction apart. I don't understand why she has this problem. I had tried various approaches, including the "Do what I tell you to do;" method used when I was in school. I used expanded notation and laid the problem out with realia. Nothing gets in. Given 72+ 88=, she will add the tens column up first. She will write the 5 in the tens column and the 1 (from 15) above the one's column. It's not that she can't do expanded notation.

   When I asked her what her teacher did in math today, it was expanded notation. She didn't remember the word for it and wrote out 536= 500+30+6. Perfect!  

   I didn't watch any TV tonight. I couldn't find anything as soul-satisfying as the jazz on HPR. I did some work on the updates. That also felt good.