Saturday, February 18, 2023

 Saturday, February 18, 2023

 I had Mama K's crew this morning. Twin E started on a new passage at a low third-grade level. She still has some memory problems, but they are resolving. Her more significant issue is with her vocabulary. She didn't know what the words enormous and formerly. Where adolescent D's problem is all with word recognition, his vocabulary is impressive. Mama K's girls are way behind the eight ball.

  I continued working on automatic recall with Twin A. It's concerning that she's stuck at this level while her Twin sister is moving ahead at a good pace.  

  I met with fourth-grade K today. I often miss seeing him on many scheduled days; he's either off with his father or sound asleep. He reported he did have a new writing assignment, and his math was good enough to draw a positive comment from his teacher. The last area of reported weakness was reading comprehension. I selected a low fourth-grade passage, which should have been easy. Wow! Was I wrong! I'd seen his problem before. He didn't know when to draw from the text and when from background information. He thought he was supposed 'to know' everything.

   I developed this exercise to help students with this problem. I tell them, "I am a twelve-year-old boy with red hair." (I'm an 82-year-old woman with white hair). Then I asked them, "What did I say?" They must say, "You're a twelve-year-old boy with red hair." First, you must understand what the speaker or writer said. Then, you can judge whether it is accurate or not. You can only take in new information if you pay attention to what the other person says.

   As I thought about it today, the problem is more complex. As we read, we must judge how much to base on background information and how much on the other person's words. Today's passage was about the impact of air and dust on the Earth's atmosphere. The sky would be black without it, even when the sun was out. We would see the stars in the sky day and night. There would be no twilight. There was a sentence following the word twilight, which defined it. K not only didn't understand it. He didn't know that the sky doesn't go into complete darkness when the sun sets. He was missing background knowledge.

  I didn't walk my 10,000 steps. It was raining most of the day. It may have been 72 degrees, but it was cold and damp. A good day for a fire to get the chill out of the air, but we don't have fireplaces or indoor heating units. I bundled up, put on my winter duds from Ohio, wrapped myself in blankets, and drank warm liquids. Judy said she spent the day under the covers. Boy, are we spoiled! Two days without sunshine, and we suffer.

  Robert Wright is my dinner companion. I read a section of Why Buddhism is Right every night. Tonight, he talked about a conversation with Joseph Goldstein about detaching from our thoughts. Goldstein said to think of them as coming from someone else and not investing in them. These thoughts are not generated by our conscious minds. They come from the default brain. Wherever they come from, they are still ours. 

   Here's my problem. Some of these thoughts are valuable. They help me solve problems. They often offer up creative ideas. While the unconscious mind can offer disturbing thoughts, it can also provide good ones. Solutions to my students' problems come up unbidden. Most of the theories I have created come from that source. Aggravation also comes from that source. It is the conscious mind's job to decide what benefits the self and others. The conscious mind mediates between the unconscious and the real world. Things that might be appropriate in one context are not in another. The conscious mind is in the best position to make that final call. It gets input from the real world and the unconscious and then can say "No" to a suggestion. We are dominated by the unconscious when we're in that much-vaunted flow state. Buddhism says to detach from all thoughts emanating from the unconscious. That doesn't sound right to me. That leaves us having to rely solely on culturally generated rules. That never covers all possibilities. Those are the primary colors. Always safe but not nuanced.