Tuesday, August 16, 2022

 Tuesday, August 16, 2022    

 

   Before falling asleep, I massaged my skull with a tennis ball. That relieved my headache. It may be that the plates in my skull shifted because of the change in my alignment. I had pushed the flesh of my left heel over to the inside of my foot, and I did a slight bend to the right as I walked. I slept well for the rest of the night. When I got up, my head felt great, and my dizziness was gone. I made it all around the block with ease. I ran into Carol with her dogs, Luke and Max, as I came to an end of Punawele. I turned around to walk with her. She spotted a loose dog and decided to turn around. She had experience with dogs attacking her dogs.  

     Carol told me about her neighbor from hell, not here in Hawaii but around their home in Oregon. She has to pass her neighbor's house when she walks her dogs. They've taken in a rescue dog who charges her and her dogs whenever they pass. There are ordinances against loose dogs. This woman is undeterred. From the stories Carol told me, this woman is self-destructively narcissistic. She has an enlarged sense of entitlement which gets her in trouble repeatedly.

   Step-Up Tutoring had a town hall meeting today. Julia announced the professional educators on the Step Up Tutoring Instructional team would require tutors to use programs they selected. They will observe tutors to make sure they are using the prescribed lessons. Professional educators are obsessed with 'canned programs. Not only are they bringing in required math and reading programs, but they also require the completion of three forms a week; one for the student's teacher, a second for the student's parents, and a third for Step-Up, tutors have to attend a Town Hall meeting once a semester and attend someone's office hours. The program is making demands on the volunteer tutors that rival the demands on teachers in school systems. Teachers are quitting because of the demands and accompanying pressures. What do they think is going to happen with volunteers? The feedback from parents and teachers has been good so far. If they lose tutors who don't want to dance to their tune, they won't have anything to offer students. I suspect they will have to cancel my service because I teach a different method than they are advocating. It is personally depressing. 

   I counted the participants in today's required town hall meeting. There were about twenty-five. There are something like seven hundred volunteer tutors and two town hall meetings a semester. What are the chances the other six hundred seventy-five would show up for the other Zoom meeting? 

      The one up note was I met up with Howard, who attended one of my office hour sessions in the breakout session. There were supposed to be four people in our group. The other two didn't have their videos on. I suspect they signed in but didn't participate. The last time I spoke to Howard, he said he was dealing with health issues. He told me he was feeling better but had been struggling for a year. He had a very bad reaction to the Covid vaccine. Seeing Howard again was a treat. 

   I watched more of the Indian Matchmaker. It looked like the series had ended. Too bad. I was enjoying it.  I watched another show Une Vie ou L’autre.  I was surprised to find this was an American film, all in English. Why did it have a French title? There was a lot of French writing on my Netflix site. I wasn't sure what was going on. Whatever, I loved the movie. I watched to the end, even though it was way past my bedtime.