Saturday, March 8, 2025

 Saturday, March 8, 2025 

   Last Sunday, our church displayed the Jubilee Cross. Joseph said he was surprised the priest didn't say more about it because it had some special powers. If you did several things, you could reduce someone's time in purgatory. Joseph wrote out the list: 1) go to confession; 2) pray for the Pope's personal intentions, say, an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and a Glory Be. 3) detach yourself from all sin (Good luck!) 4) claim an indulgence on behalf of Mike in prayer to God. My belief in purgatory is thin to nonexistent, but if there is any chance this is true, I want to do what I can for Mike. It will be an adventure, and I'll think of Mike with every act. What can be bad?

   Confession was available today from 9 to 10. I've only been to confession once in my life. That was right after I converted. That was a scream. I met with the priest in Princeton who had worked for years with Mike to help in his conversion process. They became good friends. I was ushered into the church without instruction. The priest claimed I was on some higher spiritual plane.  So, back to the confession. I requested a traditional setting for the confession, one of those booths where the priest is on the other side of a screen.  He asked me what sins I wanted to confess. I said everything I had done wrong in my life. He groaned, thinking he would be there forever as I reviewed the list. He wasn't.  I didn't. That's all I had to say.

   As I approached the church today, I realized I didn't even know if there was a confessional booth. Where did they conduct confessions?  I parked in the back of the church. I saw TJ facing a priest in the Adoration Chapel. It looked like it must be a confessional scene.  I waited until she came out.

    When she did, she grabbed my arm and said. You want Fr. Lio. He's hearing confessions in the church. The priest she had spoken to wasn't fluent in English. She held me firmly but lovingly (TJ has wonderful loving energy) and ushered me to the back of the church.  I had never noticed a little room on the north side of the church.  There were two people in line before me.

       I was a little nervous going in. My last confession had been over twenty years ago; it was also my first. The priest I was with didn't comment about my dereliction. No judgment.  Lovely. I had two things to confess. First, vengeful anger at people who had laid trips on me.  Many people have done that. I only have vengeful thoughts about therapists.  The people in my private life who laid trips on me, I force myself to see their point of view. The priest advised 'letting go' of the anger. It served no purpose. I was in total agreement. He was preaching to the choir. What he didn't tell me was how to let go. That's always the question.

   The second issue was items I don't report on my taxes. It doesn't amount to large sums of money, but to get Mike the greatest boost out of purgatory, I had to be sin-free. Good luck! The priest said, "Just pray for Mike," while chuckling. He did not comment on reporting income.  I don't think he held much stock in the idea that I could accelerate Mike's arrival in heaven if I did those things. The whole theory of purgatory is upsetting.

   After Mike died, someone sent me a book on the subject. Holy cow! You can only make it out if people pray for you. No one is going to pray for me. I don't mean no one will miss me. Perhaps, by the time I die, there will be no one who will even notice I'm gone. I threw the book out.  Mike should have gone straight to heaven if there is such a place. He deserves every blessing available.

   After my session with him yesterday, I had a lengthy telephone conversation with fifth-grade GV's grandmother. I had a question about his relationship with his dad.  The story GV wrote yesterday had some awkward sentence structures. It's an extension of his auditory processing problem.  I was concerned his dad would be anxious to correct that. I limit my objectives with a student. Perfect is never the goal- just better.  What he wrote yesterday was way better.

   When we started, he had no idea what to write about; yesterday, he came to me with something he wanted to write about. He had organized the piece in his mind before we started; he had a main idea and supporting details.  Each supporting detail was organized.  The only correction I made was with the opening sentence.  It didn't express the main idea; he dove into the details. 

    After much discussion, I realized I would run the writing through Grammarly with him as I did the last piece. If Grammarly made a suggestion, he could accept or dismiss it. If he did something I didn't agree with, I could say so, and we could discuss possibilities.

   GV's grandmother questioned my approach to teaching writing. I understood. I never expected it to be effective, but it proved an absolute winner. 

  I developed it about forty years ago; no, I discovered it. I worked with a second-grade non-reader. I wrote stories based on his ideas, making sure they were well written. I figured he would enjoy reading his ideas expressed in words. The first story was very simple—something about a fictional animal. The following story was more complex. After about ten stories, he was dictating long pieces about the Titanic.

   His mom called me to say how impressed she was with his writing. I said, "Well, Carol. I'm doing the writing." She said, "You don't understand; he's speaking better." I got surprised feedback from parents over and over. How can this method be effective if I do most of the work? I model how to write.  I started out doing most of the composing based on the student's ideas. While I am always the one doing the typing because that puts me in line-by-line control, the student takes over more and more. They become excited by the process and look forward to it.  The method is an example of Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development: the gap between what the student does on their own and what they do with support represents the student's potential.  The student is 'scaffolded' to a higher level by providing support. When you work in that zone, the student can move forward.  Composing is a complex skill involving handwriting, spelling, and auditory recall of the sentence you mentally generated, and are now trying to write, is also a complex skill.  I teach them in isolation.  Dictation teaches writing skills minus handwriting or typing; cowriting teaches verbal expression and composition.  Handwriting is a separate skill.

   GV's grandmother told me a story indicating GV's dad's support of his son.  GV was in a foot race for his school's field day event.  GV came in last despite being the tallest of the participants. It was a surprise. She sent me a video. I didn't get a very good view, but while GV raised his knees as he ran, there were other problems.  He 'pulled' himself forward instead of 'pushing' himself forward. 

   He used his thighs to raise his knees and gravity to launch himself forward. In walking, no less running, you should push yourself forward. You initiate the movement with your glute muscles and then engage your back and hamstring muscles. Then, you raise the free leg by contracting the abdominals. The thigh muscles come in now, supporting the abdominals. Gravity helps launch the body forward. Finally, the foot pushes off. GV's strategy was to drag himself through the race.

   Unfortunately, many people, even children, walk that way. Watching them, I realize they'll be out of commission by the time they're forty. We do need to teach remedial walking.

   Isaac, one of my update readers, was interested in my thoughts about the differences between the right and left brains. He thinks the difference is reductionistic, and I agree. I see it as a continuum.

   I'm more right brain than left.  It doesn't show up in all areas of my life.  Even as a child, I saw myself as someone with creative ideas but unable to produce anything meaningful. In my twenties, I met a woman who could conceive but not carry a child to term. I don't know how many miscarriages she had.  I saw myself that way.  I knew that to produce something meaningful, I would have to change. I started working on it. 

    Several years later, someone commented that I was one of those teachers who didn't follow the lesson plan. He meant it as a compliment, but after all my hard work to become someone who wrote lesson plans and kept an attendance book, I didn't take it that way.

     I formulated a concept. The creative and imitative were two sides of the same coin.  I conceived of them on a Y-axis.  Anyone who was all to one side versus the other would be severely cognitively impaired. Someone who was completely imitative would never be able to solve even the simplest problem independently.  Everything would have to be explicitly taught, and I do mean everything.  I'm not talking about academics. I mean everything. The person would never do anything on their initiative because they wouldn't conceive of it.

     The 100% creative person would also be in a jam. They would figure out how to solve a limited problem, but they wouldn't be able to duplicate it. That would require imitating something they had done previously.

     Everyone is somewhere on the spectrum. Those who fall on the 'creative' side, as I conceived of it at 26, benefit significantly from expanding their imitative skills, and vice versa. I have had to convince students they would benefit from expanding their skill set. Some want to cling to whatever they are.

     Some people are relatively balanced from the beginning. Some develop skills from both sides but integrate them only in their areas of strength. They must use both sides to some extent if they're good at what they do.