Wednesday, October 5, 2022

 Wednesday, October 5, 2022

    I woke up this morning thinking of a school principal I worked with in Ohio who taught me about myself and how I fit into the educational setting. He said most people like me left the classroom and went into college teaching. I was a rarity. I wanted to develop solutions to solve problems. He associated it with research. I wanted to help people directly develop solutions to real problems, not just test methods in a research setting. This morning, my thoughts weren’t of our time working together. No, it was about a tragedy in his life. While driving home on February night, his car skidded on black ice. He was severely injured, almost losing an arm. But worse yet, his twelve-year-old son was killed. How do you live with that?

  On a much lighter note, my haole koa has still not put out new shoots. The tree is an invasive species brought to the island for a ‘good’ purpose. It was supposed to be food for a domestic animal. If I remember the story, the animal had zero interest in it as a food source. The tree was interested in spreading its seed all over the land. It has. Once the tree is a foot high, it has already put out a deep root that is difficult to pull out. The tree is resistant to even the most toxic weedkiller. The ones I was dealing with were already two feet high, too tall to be pulled out even by a strong man. If my boiling water works on them, I will try to kill a larger one. Plan: cut the tree down to a stump. Pour a tea kettle of boiling water over it daily. It can be pretty challenging, a fun game.

  Today was a busy day for tutoring. At 2 p.m., I had a session with adolescent D. I asked him if he remembered any words in the sentence we had worked on. He said, “The policeman and the fire inspector arrived at the scene.”  The original sentence was, “The policeman and the fire inspector visited the site.” Close but no cigar, not when the goal is accurate recall. Accurate recall is necessary if we will understand what the author said.

 I proposed doing some classwork. D said he had nothing he wanted to work on. I asked if it felt painful to do the work. He said yes. I could easily believe he was overwhelmed with the feeling as he did schoolwork. He experienced more failure than success. I did EFT tapping on that pain. I used this setup phrase: “Even though I feel pain when I do schoolwork, I love and comfort myself.” I did not tell him the pain was probably shame. As I proceeded, I wanted to switch the phrase to say, “I forgive myself.”  He didn’t want me to. He didn’t want to give up attacking himself. Punishing someone or ourselves to motivate change sometimes works, and sometimes, it has the exact opposite effect; it’s the very thing that prevents us from doing the work. We have to know when to give it up and then how to give it up. It’s not easy. D said he experienced relaxation as I tapped repeatedly. He was surprised at how much better he felt.

 Immediately after my session with Adolescent D, I worked with Mama K’s crew. Fourth grade K is moving ahead at an impressive pace. I would have to up the level of his work from low third grade to low fourth grade.

  I continued working with Starfall with the twins. Twin E did so much better with the material, I was uncertain if I had her name right. Twin A did alright, too.

  Finally, I had adolescent K at the end of the afternoon. On Wednesdays, he sees me during a break between two jujitsu classes. We continued with the comprehension on Beyond the Bright Sea. I never told him the name of the book, and today, he asked me if it was Beyond the Bright Sea. His younger brother had to read it over the summer.   His level of participation is generally better. I would love more feedback from his teacher.