Thursday, June 8, 2023

 Thursday, June 8, 2023  

     I set an early alarm because we were supposed to have driveway yoga this morning. I was out the door before six am. I didn't go as far up Kukuna because I was concerned I would get home too late. I ran into a woman I had met once before. I didn't recognize her, but she remembered me. When she told me her name, Laurie, I remembered. She lives around the corner with her children, Christine and Noah. I was a little confused. I was thinking of an adult couple; was she thinking of children? We stood and talked for a while. I recommended we continue on our walk together. I got a few more steps in than I might have, passing my house to walk with her instead of going in.

I got home at twenty of seven- plenty of time. I completed the Wordle puzzle and the NY Times mini for the day and got to work writing a response to a letter that had been weighing on me. I was focused on writing the letter, knowing I would be called when the class would start. When I checked the time, it was seven twenty-two. I checked my phone. Yvette had texted at six twenty-six. It would still have been too late to get my full walk in.

I got an email from a friend in England who keeps up with my updates and periodically responds. Today, she gave me information about herself for the first time. She developed a heart condition two years ago, which slowed her down considerably. She's still getting used to the new normal. She's still relatively young; she must be in her fifties. We didn't know each other well before she moved back to England. She was the wife of one of my old students. While my student and I maintained contact for years, we are no longer in touch. Ironically, I do maintain contact with two of his ex-wives. He has good taste in women. They're all powerhouses, solid and capable. 

I had two sessions today, both fascinating. I had a session with Mama K's crew. Twin A was first. She's the one reading at a third-grade level with support. I can't imagine she will progress at the rate she has been. She read the passage better than she had. Some of it was recalled from her previous readings. However, she reads more of the passage with each session. The new sections are unfamiliar. In the passages we had already read, she had to decode the multi-syllable words from scratch again. I had to remind her of the syllable structure and its implications. She had trouble remembering the c before i made an /s/ sound. I introduced thinking of it as two sets: if the c is followed by the e, i, or y, it equals the /s/ sound. If the c is followed by an a, o, or u, it equals a /k/ sound. I drew two circles.

          

ck= /s/               c=/k/

ce, ci,                cy ca, co, cu

I wrote cat. Does cat belong in group one or two? She got the group right but not the sound. I created sets that she would be familiar with using her immediate family versus her extended family. She seemed to get that. When I asked her questions about the relationships in her family, she couldn't answer. Twin E overheard, and she answered the question. Is Twin E's thinking skills possibly much better than Twin A's? We'll see.

Next, I worked with Twin E. It's like she was trained in the Whole Language method of reading and took it to heart. She can't recognize words she has seen before but can remember the story. She infers words from their first letters and misreads the text, using different words with the same meaning. I asked her if she worked on saying the words that were right for the story instead of saying the words as written on the page. Yes. Okay. I removed the story from Screen Share so she couldn't see it. Instead, I 'read' the text to her, sounding out each phoneme and having her identify the word as I had done with Kindergarten Steven. She stumbled at first and then got the drift. I could feel her brain work differently as she did it. Then, I had her reread the passage. She read it accurately. Same goal; new approach.

The girls both reported that fourth-grade K was still asleep. I left the Zoom meeting and called their mom to arrange to meet with him later. She said he was up and could get on now. I sent another Zoom invitation. I asked him more questions about his feelings about reading. How did he feel about reading on a scale of 1 to 10? A five. How did he feel about video games, which he played a lot? A 9. That was a surprise. What was a 10? Playing with his friends at the beach. Wow! That was good news. His mom takes him and the girls to the beach as often as possible. She always has. She figures they can get their energy out that way. They also are away from electronics, getting exercise, and relating to friends face to face. It's a winning situation.

I couldn't get a clear picture of how he felt about reading. He would refer to reading out loud in class, but since he wasn't doing that with me, it wasn't relevant. I opened a reading selection. I had meant to download more stories on a fourth-grade level since he seemed overwhelmed with the work we did in our last session, but I had forgotten to do it. Instead, I decided to work on the fifth-grade story one paragraph at a time.  

"What do we do now?" asked Gavin. It was his first time camping, and he expected a long, boring night. He and Eric had finished dinner, and it was only six-thirty.

I asked him questions. Where does the story take place? Who are the characters? How does Gavin feel about camping? Do you think Gavin has been camping before?  How does Gavin feel about the camping? What do you think is going to happen in the story?

K had no problems answering the questions. It took me a while but realized I had sent K mixed messages. When I started working on comprehension, he would answer what he thought would be good without conforming to the text. He had a better story in his mind. I broke him of that habit. Then, he would quote the exact words of the text in response to questions and not infer or imagine. I have to teach him when to zig and when to zag.  

Later in the day, I had adolescent D. I found a 'cheat sheet' for the Hawaii Driver's Test online. It's all electronic. You answer the question, and it tells you if you got it right or wrong. Fantastic! It's like one of his video games. It's easy to do and uses the correct study strategy according to Make It Stick; he has to constantly test himself. He can do this on his own easily. Would he? Probably not. I asked him if his conscious or unconscious mind said, "No." It was his unconscious mind. Why does he live as a slave to his unconscious mind? Why doesn't his conscious mind have any power? At least we're at a point where he knows the difference between his conscious and unconscious thoughts and feelings. 

At the end of the session, I spent a few more minutes with him and started a dialogue between his conscious and unconscious mind. Here's the result after a few minutes.

Conscious: I don't appreciate you. Well, truth be told. I have mixed feelings about you. Part of me doesn't like you because you don't want to work on things I want to. Part of me does like you because you can do stuff without me thinking about it.

Unconscious mind: If you really wanted me to do something, you'd make me do it. 

It sounds like an excellent description of the inner conflict we have all experienced. With D, the unconscious mind is always dominant. At best, he won't make an effort to work independently. At worst, he will refuse, claiming the assignment is 'weird.' His future prospects are scary. Is there something wrong with his prefrontal lobe? Is this something he was born with, or is it undeveloped because he hasn't used it?