Wednesday, November 9, 2022

 Wednesday, November 9, 2022

 

  After finishing my morning activities, I was exhausted and needed a nap. I did not have that deep, satisfying sleep I so love. When Scott returned from a PT appointment, I was awake but unhappy about getting up. I forced myself to work cleaning another set of screens on the lanai.

  The lanai is a five hundred square foot screened-in porch. There are eight sets of eight-by-four-foot on top and eight eight-by-three-foot sets on the bottom. I washed them in place with repeated water rinses from a two-gallon garden spray bottle while I rubbed the screens with a rag. I do this at least once a year. It is hard to see the difference. 

  The other day, I stopped in the middle of a screen. I had only washed half before I went off to do something else. The washed half dried, and I could see the difference between the two sides. A brown film covered the unwashed side; it made a huge difference.

  At two pm, I had adolescent D. We worked on spelling. I used a piece he dictated using the Google speech-to-writing app. He sounded out the word and determined the most likely spelling. He sometimes uses a less likely spelling, such as when he used sh to spell the /s/ sound and later a /ch/ sound, as in the chair. I tried spell check on his spelling.

   In most cases, the correct word came up, and he recognized it. He had a problem with the word our when he spelled it owr. Spell check did not offer the correct spelling. Given the phonetic accuracy of his spelling, the fault lay with the program, not D. He was impressed by how well he did.

  Eighth-grade K was off early today. I met with him right after the session with D. I thought I was supposed to work on the Capstone project. His mother interrupted and said he had something due immediately. Time was wasted as his mother told me what he had to do. K had no idea, or he wasn't up to expressing what he did know. I scanned the teacher's email to K's mom. I got that he was supposed to do something with the characters and theme in A Raisin in the Sun. It was almost impossible to get information out of him. It is very frustrating when he goes into his "I'm not saying nothing" mode. 

  I spent time dealing with his emotional state. He has thoughts; he doesn't share them. We established he was scared. I did a visualization with him in a previous session. Today, I asked him to list the people who would stick by him if others laughed at him. He listed his family and friends. Then I asked if he had ever seen people laugh at someone. Did that person come back to school the next day? Yes. Did his friends abandon him? No. His friends laughed at him, and they all remained friends. This image had deep meaning for him. He said it made a big difference for him. In the remaining fifteen minutes, the words flowed. He gave some information about each character in A Raisin in the Sun. He expressed a theme without realizing it with each character's description. I helped him write the point.

  I had Mama K's three kids immediately afterward. They were on the iPhone instead of one of the two tablets. They were both out of juice. K started. He wandered as we worked. The image was all over the place, making me dizzy. At one point, I snapped, "Where are you going?" "To the bathroom." Was he going to take me with him? He was trying to get one of his sisters on instead, but he didn't think to tell me what was going on.

  I worked with Twin A. Yes, she had gotten on Starfall once during the week, but she hadn't used it to work on reading the way I asked her to. She picked a story on a reading level beyond her ability level. She read the words she could; I sounded out the others, and she had to figure out what the word was. I used the process I developed with adolescent D and her brother, fourth-grade K, to help with their auditory processing. Both have seen a big difference. K with his ability to understand what people are saying, and D with his reading. They don't see the printed word as I sound out the phonemes because they read well enough to figure it out from the print. Neither of the twins read well enough to do that. A read here as her twice in a very short story. Both of the girls have problems with word recognition. Phonics is their strong skill.

  While we were working, Twin A walked down the street yelling after her mother. What??!! Mama K had told me they could work up to four pm. The family was on the move to someone else's house. The twins older sister, S, got on the phone. I told her I would work with Twin E on Friday when the kids were off school.

  I started watching a documentary on Bob Dylan, No Direction Home. That man is weird; he's amazing but very weird.