Wednesday, February 22,2023

Wednesday, February 22,2023

 

I got up late this morning, almost 8 am. I fed Elsa before I went out. I went through the house checking for accidents. I found some throw-up on the library rug but nothing else. Did she use the doggie door or hold on? She goes to the bathroom door to be let out when I'm around. I walk over to the doggie door and call her. She comes immediately and goes out without hesitation. I'm waiting for the day I can be sure she does that alone.

   I went to mass for Ash Wednesday. I thought attendance would be light. I didn't think of parking in the library parking lot. Boy, did I have it wrong! The church parking lot was jammed. I had to park on the grass in front of the church. I thought I would sit inside the church instead of the outside lanai. On days when attendance is light, all the doors are open. This doesn't mean just the front door; the church's side walls at door height are all glass sliding doors. When they're open, there's no air conditioning. The church is at a bearable temperature, cooled by the island breezes.

   I saw a few people I hadn't seen in an age. One was a therapist Yvette and I had gone to see. Covid interrupted our sessions. It was just as well. I didn't care for her style. When I saw her, I was struck by how beautiful she was. She had changed her hairstyle, so it was less extreme. I could focus on her face instead of her hair.

   The mass lasted much longer than I thought it would. I managed to stop at the bank to deposit a check. It wasn't crowded; I was in and out in no time. I was going to stop at Costco on the way home. If I had, I would never have made my two pm appointment with Adolescent D.

    I thought about my work with fourth-grade K in a later appointment. His teacher asked me to work with him on converting improper fractions to mixed numbers. I thought I would have to cover everything about fractions. He tends to be out of it.

    I made it home in time for my appointment with Adolescent D, but I wasn't in the best mood. We didn't do the letter tracing exercise. I forgot, and he said nothing. This set us off on the wrong foot to start out with. The letter tracing activity is soothing.

    We worked on how anxious he feels whenever someone talks about something he doesn't know. On Monday, I discussed the possible pronunciations of -ure, as in future and sure. He watched me think. He watched me explore. He was gone, braindead. I asked him to observe his feelings. He felt stressed as I continued to talk. He didn't acknowledge his brain-dead response as caused by stress. For him, it was just something that happened.

   We continued reading from D's book, Investing for Young Adults. It was a strained session. While he read many words as well as he ever had, he wrestled more with the words he missed. I was also upset with his performance. I got confused, mixing up two words. I wondered if his mental state was a reflection of mine or if mine was a reflection of his. When the clock said two thirty, he quickly said our time was up. On Monday, he was happy to go five minutes over. We were both glad to end this session. You can't have all good days.

   I signed on with Mama K's crew immediately after. I started with Twin A. She completed the first selection in Barnell Loft's third-grade book. We read it over and over until she had it perfectly. She often wants to ignore the words on the page and substitute something she thinks makes sense. It usually does, but reading accurately is essential. You can't hear something different than what the author wrote and understand what they said.

   I had twin E next. I had been working on memory issues with her. I'm kind of stuck. I don't want to make her do difficult things repeatedly and have her just experience failure. I was frustrated. We did some decoding. I asked her if she knew what the vowels were. She said, "a, o, e, and n." I wrote all the letters of the alphabet on the whiteboard to show her which ones were the vowels. Students must learn them in order. That way, they automatically recall them instead of having to rediscover them each time. She couldn't even recite the alphabet. I'm not sure Twin A can either. I've never checked. I will do so on Saturday; hopefully, I remember. I was concerned Twin E would feel bad about working on the alphabet when her sister was much more advanced in her reading. But no. She was happy to do work on her level. 

   As I was working with her, she disappeared from Zoom. I called Mama K. She reconnected her; she disappeared again almost immediately. I called Mama K again; the tablet needed to be charged. She would call me when it had enough.  

   Fourth grade K came on. I started by testing his knowledge of fractions. "If your mom buys a pizza, would you prefer to have 1/3 or 1/5?" Students who don't understand fractions say 1/5. K said 1/3. He knew what those numbers represented. I gave him an addition problem with like denominators problem. He aced that. He asked for help with mixed numbers. That was exactly what his teacher asked me to work on with him. I showed him how to solve the problem by drawing it and then using the division algorithm. He grasped it immediately. The difference in his participation was tremendous. I asked him if he understood what people had to say better. He said yes. This is a result of the comprehension activity I did on Saturday. I had him read a passage and tell me what it was about. He was off the wall, far from what the passage was about. I told him he couldn't get the information from his head; he had to get it from the page and the author's words. This may have been his problem all along. He thought he was supposed to know everything, not hear or read new information. If that's the case, he was an easy fix.