Friday, June 14, 2024

 Friday, June 14, 2024

    I woke at 2:20 a.m. and thought, "Oh, no!" It took a while, but I fell back asleep. The next time I woke up, it was after 4 a.m., which was good enough. I still stayed in bed. I shouldn't have. Any thoughts I have while lying in bed are more draining than when I sit up, even the productive ones. 

  This morning, the productive thinking was finding ways to help going-into-fifth-grade CL get basic math.  Yesterday, I discovered she used her right brain to think of math. You need your left brain online, or you're sunk.  Ideally, you need both to do well in math. The left and right brain, the abstract and the concrete, have to work together in math, especially the basic elementary school math, which is so closely connected to the concrete.  Is that her problem, the lack of coordination between the left and right? 

  Then again, is it just a problem in math?  Does she have a good memory for written words? Spoken words?  Does she remember instructions her mother gives her? "Go to  your Auntie and get a cup of sugar and a box of eggs."  Can she hold on to those words until she gets to her Auntie's house? That would make it all left brain problems.

   Then why does she have a problem getting her left brain online? Is there a neurological problem from birth?  Did she grow up simply not using the left brain a great deal?  She wouldn't have needed left-brain thinking if she came from one of the smaller Marshallese Islands. Is this a pattern unique to her family? If it is, it does not indicate a genetic condition as much as a learned behavior. When we synchronize with those around us or become attuned, we learn to be like them.  How we use our brains is learned as much as behaviors visible to those around us are learned, like the language we speak or how we eat.

   Then, there is the possibility that the problem is getting learned information into long-term memory. Can CL hold it in short-term working memory but does not deposit it into long-term memory?  I've already asked her if she has seizures at night. Seizures reset the brain and wipe clean short-term memory before information can be passed on to long-term memory.  That consolidation happens when we sleep.  If so, does this affect just abstract information or concrete visual information, too? 

  This was my second day with IWT (Interval Walking Training).  I came across a video on research conducted in Japan on senior citizens.  IWT differs from regular interval training because it alternates slow walking with faster walking instead of low-intensity with high-intensity movement, appropriate for a healthy twenty-year-old. I set my alarm to go off after three minutes.  There's not much difference between my relaxed walking and my energetic walking. For the intense three minutes, I swung my arms and lifted my legs more.

    Because I was expecting Casey to come by to do some gardening work in the afternoon, I went to Ulu Wini in the morning today.  I had told going-into-sixth grade CL I would be there early. She said she would be sure to be there. When I arrived, she was nowhere to be seen.  I got the head of the social work team to call her parents. She arrived shortly afterward; so did her parents.

   CL's family must have come from one of the smaller islands in the Marshall Islands. I don't know why they came to see me, but it was impressive that they did. Both the mother and father and two preschool-aged children.  It was an intact family which responded to their child's needs. That sounds pretty good.  

  These poor folks must experience Hawaii as comparable to Mars. I can't begin to tell you how alien our world is to them. If they walked down a city street, everyone would stare at them as if they came from Mars. All the Marshallese grieve the loss of their homeland. They moved to Hawaii because the USA test bombing program made their home inhabitable. Not only do those folks not speak English, but they can't read or write in any language. They are helpless. 

   I asked them not to stay while I taught their daughter. Sometimes, having parents there is a good idea. I ask them to be there for a first session to assure their child they will protect them from me and support them if they feel uncomfortable. Unfortunately, some parents think protecting me from their child's inattentive or rude behavior is their job. No. I'll deal with that.

  I wonder if I successfully communicated to these poor parents that I wanted them to go so CL could be in her most relaxed state. The kids have learned to trust me not to be judgmental; parents are too invested to ever let go of that with their children.  Making judgments and correcting their children is part of their job description.  They did leave. I will ask Josephine if she can arrange a conference with the parents with a translator. While the parents are babes in the woods, they deserve all the respect anyone can offer them for their courage.

  When I had CL alone, I first wrote the numbers 5 and 4 on a piece of paper in the order. I asked which was the larger number.  She picked four, the number to the right. I concluded she assumed the number to the right would be the larger, and she had no number sense.  She did not connect the numerals with physical quantity.  When l laid out the Cuisenaire rods, she could see which was the larger quantity.  Anticiipating, the possibility she couldn't tell the difference when looking at numberals, I formulated a plan.

    I grabbed a sheath of paper and pencil, told CL to follow me, and walked around the grounds counting objects. How many trees are in that space? How many cement lids are over there? How many cars are parked in this space?  How many empty parking spaces? How many mailboxes?  How many washing machines? How many dryers?  After counting a set of objects, she had to write the number on the paper I was carrying.   I asked her if this was helping.  She said yes.  If that was true, I assumed she made no visceral connection between the abstract numerals and the concrete objects she encountered. Children develop number sense by counting the objects in their lives- any and all.

   When we returned to our seats, I gave her simple one-digit addition and subtraction problems. She asked for a number line, which I wrote. She has to learn to do it for herself. She was creating and solving problems on her own. I tried one double-digit addition problem without regrouping. That was too much. I'd try again on Monday.  

   I met with going-into-second-grade KG.  I followed up on his handwriting. His hand grip was much more relaxed.  I had prepared pages with printed lines he could use to practice his handwriting.  The other day, I gave his father blank pages last to help KS practice.  His dad had done nothing with him. Oh, so sad. I gave him the pages I prepared and told him to take them home immediately. There's a better chance KS will do the work on his own.   

   I had to grab going into third-grade SP. He announced it was moving to Spokane, which surprised me. When I spoke to Shauntel, one of the social workers, she told me they had just found out about it this morning. She suspected his mother was taking him there to live with an older brother, and then she would return to Hawaii. We do not anticipate this will go well for this boy. He has serious learning problems and is emotionally immature.   

 At 4:30, I had an appointment with a going-into-fourth-grade LG. This was my seventh session with him. He could read low third-grade material with ease now. He told me in one of our recent sessions that he had started reading road signs. Holy cow! That's something four-year-old emergent readers do.  How did he cope in school? 

  He got stumped on two words: first, the word twenty.  I guided him through the decoding process. I divided the words into syllables for him. A skill he has yet to develop.  Did he know the sound /en/ made?  No. I wrote the word ten. Did he know that word? What sound did the /en/ make?  He struggled with that but got it.  "Put the /w/ sound before the /en/; blend them."  "now put the /t/ sound in front of /wen/." He got that and then was stumped on the /ty/. He didn't know what sound the /y/ made.  I wrote the words mommy and daddy. Did he recognize those words? Yes. What was the final sound in the words?  It took him a minute, but he figured it out. Then he had to go back and reconstruct the /twen/ and the /ty/ and blend those. He got the word.

   A few words later, he hit the word thirty. Again, he declared he didn't know the word and acted like he didn't have a chance in hell of figuring it out. Again, I led him through the decoding process. /ir/?  /th/ and /ir/?  He got it but still couldn't figure out the word. He couldn't remember the sound of the /ty/ from the word twenty, which he had read a few minutes before. He was in a dead run, avoiding the work.  Once he figured it out, he was angry at himself for missing an easy word.  Oh, fun. Another perfectionist.

  I have to teach kids to tolerate challenges, lack of perfection, not knowing, confusion, etc., etc. His mother came into the room. I thought she would push him, but no, she just wanted to say hello. I told her what was going on. She said he did that all the time. I assured her I would deal with it. Perfectionism and failure avoidance are as much a learning problem as word blindness, perhaps even more serious.

    Darby came by in the afternoon to drop off the empty trash barrel. I asked her to come in to look at my permanently stain window. She noticed it was double-paned. Can you get a window these days with a single pane? She didn't know how to help me.  When she left, I looked up stained double-paned windows. The stain was caused by moisture getting in between the panes. It must have something to do with a bad seal. When we did our evening walk, I told her what I had found. She nodded. Apparently, she knew that. She said a well-sealed window won't have that problem. I told her how I had hosed down the windows at the front of the house. She gave me a look of alarm. Using tap water on the glass will damage it. Our tap water contains silicon, which can etch glass.  She felt slightly better when I told her I had squeegeed the water off the window. Many people hose the windows and then leave them to dry. Apparently, that's when the water does its worst.