Saturday, April 1, 2023

Saturday, April 1, 2023

 

   I woke up early; it was still dark, and the roosters were silent. When I finally got up, I assumed it was close to seven. It wasn’t; it was close to eight. I had a nine am appointment with Mama K’s crew. I fed Elsa before we left. While she ate, I put some chips in a bowl and a cup of water in the library. I would be ready for the session with them with available nutrition.

   B’s grandson has plans to move to Utah with a friend, enroll in a local college, live in a dorm that does not require people to take courses at the college, work, and get Utah state residency so their tuition will be one-third of what it is now as out of staters. I had some questions about this plan. Could they indeed stay in the dorm without being full-time students? More importantly, could they earn state residency while attending school? Why am I involved? Mike had a big investment in the boy. I’m Mike’s surrogate. I don’t know half as much as Mike did, but I may know more than the boy’s family or friends because I’ve dealt with several colleges in my day.

 I sent Mama K a message that I’d sent the Zoom invitation. She called to say she was off to a craft fair. She sells items to earn extra money. The kids were ready to connect. Nothing. I sat at the tablet for an hour doing the Wordle puzzle for the day, some of the daily NY Times Crossword puzzles, and some work on the updates. They never showed. I heard later that they had no internet connection and asked if we could do something on Sunday.

  I went to Paulette’s to pick up water. The car charger was still plugged in. I had to pull it out to free the car for the drive. It came out easily.

    Because of the rain, Paulette, Elsa, and I remained indoors for the visit. Elsa still got Paulette to throw her the cat’s stuffed mouse endlessly. Paulette and I talked about cabbages and kings while a baseball game was played on the TV. Surprise. Paulette likes baseball. I’m not into any team sport. I barely know which team is from which city. The Yankees are still in NYC. It’s the only baseball team left from when I was young. (the Mets came later.)  We, NYC, had the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants, besides the Yankees, when I was young. There was one World Series that the Dodgers won when I was young. OMG! The excitement. All of Brooklyn wept for joy.

 I started listening to podcasts on the Science of Reading. It is all very disappointing. They don’t teach anything about teaching; they just say that it should be explicit. They also cover the politics of the movement. The problem is explicit “means one thing to you, I see, and something quite different to me.” (The quote is from Marat/Sade. Charlotte Corday says, “and now I see, love meant one thing to you and something quite different to me,” right before she stabs Marat to death. Explicit for whom? We all need different degrees of explicitness depending on the circumstances. The trick is figuring out the right amount and the suitable approach. 

    Traditional phonics teaches the relationship between the sounds (the phonemes) and the letters. A valuable lesson. I emphasize how to learn phonics and how to figure it out yourself. It is also explicit but explicit about a process of discovering the relationship on your own, not the relationship itself. Both methods have validity. I don’t assume every teacher will like teaching the discovery method, nor will it be equally effective for every student. I can use my method effectively. I make adjustments when I find a student gets stuck.