Tuesday, May 28, 2024

 Tuesday, May 28, 2024

    I was eating constantly today- anxiety eating. While I’m generally in better shape, I’m still struggling. The grief over my loss of Mike has been coming on full blast. Some days are crushing. However, I can be distracted by contact with a friend or a good tutoring session.

   Working with twenty-six-year-old S is not easy. She is in a chronic state of depression and helplessness.  It manifests in passive-aggressive behavior.  Knowing her life circumstances, I can’t say I blame her. If anyone has a right to be depressed and angry, it’s her. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it a pleasure to work with her.  Our situation improved when I returned to using The Phonics Discovery System Phase I. She wasn’t quite as hostile. She can do more demanding work, but it requires a willingness to risk failure. This way, I’m modeling the phonemic structure of every word, and she can just observe. If she doesn’t actively participate, the least she can do is attend with a questioning mind. 

  When I think of it, I must tell her what a questioning mind looks and feels like.  She must ask, “What sound is that letter going to make in this word?” or  “What letter or letters are going to represent this sound?” That’s what good learners do as they listen to a lecture or watch someone perform an action.  That’s what curiosity looks like. The mind is full of questions. A curious mind is fertile ground for new information.

   In the next step, she figures out the next word, the next sound or the letters that represent a sound within her mind. She wouldn’t have to tell me her answer.  Only she would know if she was right or wrong when I gave the answer.  Even that is too much for students with badly damaged egos caused by years of failure. Learning they did something wrong stings.   

  Frequently, students find it irresistible to blurt out their answers. That’s the third step. When they start doing that, I create more opportunities for them to participate, always letting them know I will take over if they need me to. That need may not be from a lack of knowledge but a lack of courage.  That has to be respected, too.

   I hadn’t been to the excavated area to weed for several days because of the weather.  It rained every day. I can only do so much before my back starts hurting.  I set the bucket with the pulled weeds aside for the next day.

   It was a Ulu Wini day.  Third-grade S, who used to avoid me like a plague, requests time with me. I am pushing phonemic awareness and decoding. That is what got him off his stuck place. He was enthralled when I showed him that words were made up of individual sounds. He subsequently went in another direction on his own. I can’t blame students who avoid decoding. It’s ‘obvious’ to them that good readers don’t do that. They just ‘know’ the words. 

    Fifth-grade RM came to me.  We worked on comprehension for several sessions. Today, she wanted to work on math- long division. I invited fifth-grade ML to join us. Neither girl had a clue how to do long division.  I gave them division problems, such as 40 divided by 5 or 400 divided by five, and had them use repeated subtraction.  They showed some improvement in the half hour we worked together. I gave them a slightly more complicated problem at the end, like 432 divided by 5. Fifth-grade RM had no idea how to do subtraction with regrouping. OMG!

   My final student was Kindergarten KP.  Again, he wanted to demonstrate his mathematical skills. Sure, Go for it.

   I had been binging on The While Collar series with Matt Bomer. It was repetitive and formulaic, and the characters were nasty. Not my cup of tea. I found Falling for Figaro on Netflix a delightful surprise.