Tuesday, November 22, 2022

 Tuesday, November 22, 2022  

 My guests went sightseeing without me. Yay! Guests that are happy to let me do what I want to and go about enjoying themselves without me!!!! I spent most of the day working on the blog updates and catching up on the current back updates I send out by email.

  I got an email from eighth-grade K's teacher:

      I was very excited and proud of K's growth in his writing. It is important to note that while K worked tremendously hard to create this piece of writing, he did require about 3 hours of almost exclusively 1-1 time to make it happen. All of these ideas are his, but he needed a lot of support to get them expressed and into writing. He needed additional support and reminders about formatting and organizing as well. I am happy to provide support to help him reach success and feel confident with writing, but I wonder what our plan is moving forward to increase his levels of independence. Just something to consider as we move into the second semester and prepare for high-school-level writing. 

   This is evidence he didn't cheat. What a relief! If I had known that he had help in the beginning, I would never have doubted it. My father helped me nonstop until I was well into my teens. In my case, I always felt I didn't know how to do the work. My father gave me an inappropriate understanding of learning in general and school specifically. He taught me if I didn't have a deep understanding, I didn't know anything. When I was twenty-six in grad school, I sat with a group of friends. In response to something said, I said, "I understand it here (pointing to my head) but not here (pointing to my gut)." My friend said, "Finally." I had never made that distinction. As a result, I needed a lot of help.

  As you can see from K's teacher's email, she gave him a lot of help. He had an interesting response when I told him what his teacher said. "She didn't spend that much time with me." "I wrote it; she just helped with the formatting." Her description probably came closer to reality than his. No, I don't think he's lying. In my experience, students with trouble with verbal expression need help understanding the difference between content and form. I will work to pull details out of the student and then give them a sentence. They will say, "Yeah. That's what I said." As far as they're concerned, any words that express their idea is their writing. I can imagine K telling his mom he had written the paper, and it never occurred to him to tell her he had help. I will have to explore this. I did ask him today if he told his mom his teacher helped him. He didn't remember.

  B called. He was at Costco. Did I want anything? The place had been packed for several days as people bought food for Thanksgiving. Costco makes some great pies. They sell their delicious twenty-four-inch pumpkin pie for five dollars. They are stacked in the center of the produce room. They sell their twenty-four-inch apple pie for fifteen dollars. I asked him to pick up one of each. He delivered them to my door and gave me both pies as gifts, asking for a slice from each. He told me he also bought a package of precooked stuffed turkey breast with sauce. He had two. I bought one from him for Thanksgiving dinner for my guests and me.   

When Carol and Christine saw the size of those two pies, they laughed. The pies were ridiculously large for four people who weren't into gorging.