Saturday, March 25, 2023

 Saturday, March 25, 2023

I got up at a reasonable hour and got in close to five thousand steps in my morning walk with Elsa. I made it up to the intersection on Kukuna without breathing hard or straining. It was easy.

 B called at 8:zn30 am to say he locked his keys in his car and needed the extra set from the house. He was at Matsuyama’s. I had a nine am tutoring appointment and was hesitant, but then I figured I could make it back in time. When I got to the intersection of Nehiwa and Hiolani, I realized I didn’t know which Matsuyama’s, the one on Mamalahoa Hwy or the one by Queen K. I called B to ask. He was at the one up the mountain. He was on his way to Hilo and had stopped to buy breakfast food.

 When I arrived, he was nowhere in sight. I called, “Where are you?” He was waiting at the front door. I had made an immediate U-turn and was in a parking spot beside the exit. When we got home, he said he would be right back up. I explained that I had a nine-a.m. appointment and couldn’t do it. He said he had a ten-a.m. appointment in Hilo. I told him to ask Yvette.

  I immediately called Mama K to ask if we could delay the appointment fifteen minutes. She said they were going to a birthday party and would do the session in the car as she drove. I asked her if we could do it later. They would be home from the party at 2:30. “Let’ do it then.”   I called B to tell him I could drive him back up.

   When I got home, I made sure I had all the reading selections for my session with Mama K’s crew on screen ready for the session and sat down to work on my updates and my blog post.

   While I could walk well, I still couldn’t do the Yoga-Go exercises. I was limited in what I could do because of my shoulder and rib pain. Assuming it is an injury rather than a dislocation, it will take time to heal.

   I called Adolescent D’s mom to tell her D was happy to do an extra session this weekend. We had written eleven questions in preparation for the video interview he had to do for school. She asked me if I wrote all the questions. Then she said he should meet with his teacher first to get the questions before he did more work with me. She didn’t want me to do an extra session with him because she didn’t want him pushed into doing the work. She said he became more resistant when pushed. I argued with her. I don’t generally push. I work on helping the student remove self-created obstacles to getting the work done. She wouldn’t hear it. I finally said, “He’s your son.” I was offended by her lack of understanding of how I worked. She couldn’t conceive of him writing questions himself without me doing it for him. I felt she had no idea of how good a teacher I was. 

That stung.

   After I got off the phone, I thought about my need to finish this work. I accepted I was over-invested. It’s bad enough when a parent gets that way; a professional has to back off when that’s the case. I was depressed after his mother told me about all his bad habits: not doing the work, only doing some of it, and never handing it in no matter how much he did. His asking his teacher if he could have a waiver from an assignment because he couldn’t think of what to do freaked me out. I wrote his mom that I changed my mind and agreed with her but didn’t say why. She was afraid he would dig in rather than progress if I put pressure on him. I can easily see that he would do that.

  The plan was to meet with Mama K’s crew at 2:30. They were at the beach. Mama K tried to set them up on the phone. That didn’t work. Fourth-grade K got on first. His voice sounded like squawks. It was unintelligible. I tried to send a second invite, hoping it would be clear. Nope. Mama K said she would call me when they got home.

   I couldn’t do any trimming in the garden because it aggravated my ribs, but I did get some boiling water weeding done. I brought an electric kettle to a boil and poured it over the plants. It’s effective and environmentally friendly.

   I looked at my phone shortly before 7 pm. Mama K had texted half an hour before to say the kids were available. I met with Twin A first. She read a first-grade passage she had read the last time we worked. She sailed through it. Twin E is stuck on the lowest pre-primer level. She struggles even with that. She can’t remember words she saw earlier in the passage. I worked on comprehension with fourth-grade K.  I showed him there are three primary sources of information as we read. 1. What the passage says explicitly, 2) what the passage says implicitly, and 3) our background knowledge. I don’t use language like that. For him, I say:

1. Exactly what the story says, 2. a guess you have to make using the words in the story, and 3. information you have that’s not in the story.

      Here’s a passage I used. It’s from second-grade word problem/

                           In the monkey house, there are seven tamarins and nine marmosets. How many monkeys are there in all?

 What’s in the money house? The answer is in the #1 category. The text explicitly says seven tamarins and nine marmosets are in the monkey house. If you understand the grammar, the clauses are reversed, but the message is the same and explicit.

What are tamarins and marmosets? The answer to that is in the #2 category. The passage does not say tamarins and marmosets are monkeys. You have to infer they are. Why else would they be in the monkey house?

   K finally said they were mammals. That information was from category #3, his background knowledge. However, it is important to stick as close as possible to the words in the text. That should be the first answer since the text implied they were monkeys.

   I watched more of New Amsterdam last night. That horrible new medical director was out of the picture for this episode. Thank God. She was hard on my nerves. While Max as a director is a fantasy and Fuentes is closer to a hard reality, I’m not interested in hard realities. I don’t know if Fuentes fiscal perspective is closer to reality or as extreme in one direction as Max’s leadership with extreme in the other. I would love a world where Max’s point of view reigned. It may be all sugar plum fairies, but it’s my preferred before-bedtime treat. I sleep better.