Thursday, April 20, 2023
We had driveway yoga today. I was up and out by six am. I saw another person walking their white dog. I thought it might be Olga with Jack, but the person didn't walk like Olga, and the dog was too small. It was Yvette and Little. Elsa barked and pulled to get to them. She wanted to smell Little and get pets from Yvette. My phone rang. It was Steven's mom. I had asked her to call me. Rather than walk with Yvette, I stayed on the phone with her.
Last time we talked, she said that Steven found being drilled on the sight words boring. I thought she said he had trouble learning them. Today, I discovered the problem was with his behavior during the sight word drills. He answered for everyone else and refused to answer when it was his turn. Steven said he was frustrated and bored. This teacher is on the far end of the spectrum of ridged for an elementary school teacher. The woman is a kindergarten teacher forcing these kids to behave in ways appropriate for first or second-graders. Besides the specific problems here, reading shouldn't be taught before first grade, if not until second, which aligns with the philosophy of the Waldorf schools.
I called to offer Steven's mom a more fun way to work on sight words. I used this method with a boy I worked with forty years ago. He was a non-reader. I was already trained in the Orton Gillingham method. He was so disabled I couldn't get out of the first level with him. I developed this game.
The boy picked a word out of the dictionary, any word. He found a plastic 3D letter for every letter. He told me how many letters were in the word and handed them to me one at a time. I had to feel the letter with my eyes closed. With each letter, I had to guess what the word might be. Given a seven-letter word and the initial letter S, I needed more to go on. With each subsequent letter, the field of possibilities grew smaller. It was a fascinating experience for me. I often guessed the word correctly long before I got to the end of the word. I confirmed my guess by spelling the rest of the word. The boy wouldn't have known if I was right or wrong. It taught me something about how we read.
When it was his turn, I selected words he was working on with three letters. The exercise addressed several skills. When I gave him the letters, he had to sound out each letter and blend the word.
Let's look at the skills he used when he gave me a word. He needed to look at the word in several ways: its length, counting each letter, identifying the letters in the word, holding those letters in his short-term memory while he looked for the next 3D letter, and finally sequencing the letters. These are all areas of difficulty for someone with a learning disability. Here's a fun multi-sensory way to address these perceptual issues. It is also valuable to have the child challenge the teacher. Kids love to do that. It gives them a sense of power in a situation where students are usually without it. They pay much more attention when they're trying to flummox the teacher. It's also a game they could play with a friend.
After breakfast and posting the update on the public blog, I sprayed one section of the yard with my vinegar brew: one gallon of 30% vinegar, one gallon of 5% vinegar, a dash of Dawn dish detergent, and half a cup of table salt. I needed more of the 30% vinegar from a hardware store.
I had to get an X-ray of my right hip for my appointment with the orthopedic surgeon on Monday. I planned to stop at Kaiser for the X-ray and some lab tests and then get my car inspection done for the year. I decided that was too much, particularly since I needed to figure out where to go for the car inspection. Last year, I got it at Lex Brodie's. That was a comfortable experience. I called to make an appointment. The earliest they had was for Monday. I took one at eleven am.
Getting the X-ray was a treat. The lab tech, June, is a delightful woman. I've seen a lot of her over the last few years. I've had X-rays of my ankle, foot, and hips before and after surgery. I didn't get one after this fall. If the orthopedic surgeon was going to evaluate me for a possible THR of my right hip, she would need a current X-ray. June said they had orders to take X-rays of both my hips. Dr. Salassa needed it to do her one-year check-up on the hip she replaced last June.
Once I was done with the X-ray, I headed over to the lab. The receptionist told me she only had a urine test ordered for me. I thought Dr. Barville had ordered diabetes and kidney tests. The urine test may have been for my kidneys. I wrote Dr. Reed about the confusion. Dr. Barville ordered them because they are supposed to be done regularly as a preventive measure.
After I was through at Kaiser, I went to Costco. I wanted to pick up some items on sale, such as salad, lemons, and fresh blueberries. I hate the frozen ones. Elsa loves blueberries as much as I do. A few frozen ones fell out of the bag to the bottom of the freezer. I picked them up and threw them on the floor for her. She only touched them once they were thoroughly defrosted.
I was going to stop off at Matsuyama's, our local bodega, to pick up an onion. I forgot.
I got a text from Lutz about people puncturing gas tanks and stealing gas. Scott's gas tank is leaking. Everyone can smell it as they walk past. Scott said that most of these thefts are south of here in Ocean View and Mountain View. I hadn't heard of any incidents of theft of any sort in our neighborhood. I forwarded Lutz's text to Scott. He sent me a picture of the hole in his tank. He believed his tank had been patched, and the patch ripped. Lutz texted in response to the picture, saying Scott should use a cigarette lighter to see better. Sometimes, I can't wrap my head around Lutz's humor. It can be rather perverse.
From my phone call with Steven's mother the other day, I understood he had problems with school. Steven is far ahead of his class in all subjects except reading. There, he lags behind, and he makes it very plain he's not interested. When his mom asked Steven if he wanted to learn more about the solar system, his favorite topic, he replied he could learn it all from YouTube videos. He didn't need to read. I had some thoughts on the subject.
Steven is suffering in school. He hates it. A parent has to choose between helping a child adapt and changing their situation. Which way to go, and when is the question. It's the AA prayer, "Lord, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." It's a challenge to make those wise decisions for ourselves, no less our children. What would be best for Steven? I didn't have a position on his fate at his point. My only bias was against parents who think it is their job to protect their children from pain and ensure they have everything they want. Learning to deal with disappointment and pain is much of what life is about. There is no such thing as protecting people from life's challenges. To do so leaves the child unequipped to deal with life, helplessly dependent on others to improve their lives- addicts.
Addicts aren't created only by parents who give their children complete support; parents who deny their children any support are just as successful at accomplishing that. I view this from a Buddhist point of view: Parents should teach their children to be serene when they don't get what they want and make a sensible decision on how to proceed from there: accept or change the situation?
His mom had been thinking about homeschooling. Would it be best to pull him from a difficult situation? And it is a difficult situation. As his mom describes the interaction between six-year-old Steven and the teacher, I think no adult is present. It does sound horrible. Steven's problem was he was too smart for a school setting. He is six, in kindergarten, and doing fourth-grade math. He not only watched videos on astronomy, but his mom also recorded a video in which he gave a talk on the planets. It was better than I could have done off the cuff at any age.
I've realized the only skill I've honed since retiring is procrastination.
I had an appointment with third-grade KPS. This session was devoted to academics. I asked her to show me how she did long division. When she modeled it last time, she asked how many times 6 goes into 79 instead of how many times it goes into 7. As I explained it, she walked away from the screen. She had to ask her grandma something, go to the bathroom, and get one of her dogs. Then, she asked if we could work on reading instead.
I pulled up a third-grade selection. KPS's oral reading was excellent. She didn't have trouble recognizing the words. I asked her to tell me what the passage was about. She made something up; she didn't base her answer on the story but used her imagination instead. Our imaginations help us understand the story, but only if used appropriately. These are the four categories I ask the students to consider.
1) Exactly what it says in the story.
2) What is suggested in the story using only the words from the story.
3) Background knowledge
4) Imagination and thinking.
Every method for teaching comprehension includes categories like the above. I use another approach with students whose comprehension is very poor. I ask narrowly focused questions within each category. Those children often need to learn to make sense of an unfamiliar sentence. With Kps, I asked a general question; the goal was to get her to understand the category of her answers. KPS only used categories 3 and 4 to describe the story. This is the problem her teacher said she had. When she realized she hadn't done this right, she started fidgeting. She all but writhed. Failing is very hard for her. I assured her it was on me to ensure she understood what I was teaching. I had to find another way to explain if she didn't understand it. Our session ended on that note.
I called her grandmother right after the session. She is more traditional in her approach to dealing with the girl. She would sit there and make sure she paid attention. I'm more concerned about helping the girl become a good learner, not that she learns something I'm teaching now. To accomplish that, I have to help her learn to tolerate not knowing and not being right. I know scary stuff for all of us.
I ran into Carol on my evening walk. She said the empty lots behind the houses on Kukuna were being permitted for tiny homes. We desperately need new housing on the island. Still, I would hate to see a fifty-acre property converted into a development of fifty tiny homes. I was told the original plan was to have five-acre lots. A concentration of tiny homes like that would change our neighborhood a lot. I prefer to put a tiny house for rent on my property and have all my neighbors put one up on theirs. We should get funding from the state to do so. In my immediate neighborhood, we all live on one-acre properties. That would be reasonable. Up on Kukuna, the properties are all three acres. That would also be feasible. The government could offer us tax incentives to do so. They could also cover the permitting fees, which are exorbitant. We'll see what happens. I'll keep you posted.
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