Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Tuesday, March 4, 2025

 

     I had trouble sleeping, anticipating confronting Rob, the therapist my PCP recommended. I haven't had good luck with most therapists.  They want to make me over in their own image, with Shelly being the only exception. This is a different style than anything I've experienced before. We hold conversations.  He says what he's thinking and asks me questions about what I think. It came out he's a big fan of McGilchrist, the author of The Master and his Emissary. 

    I interpret the book's theme to be that the right brain should be dominant, the master. Anything to do with power or dominance, I find frightening. I prefer to evaluate everything from the point of view of functionality.  His position left me concerned about our relationship.  I'm uncomfortable with someone who views things from the perspective of power, which one should be dominant.  I see value in all things; very few things have absolute value.

     It was a Ulu Wini day.  Fifth-grade LK yelled hello to me and something else.  I removed my earphones and asked him to repeat it. He said he was doing well in math.  That didn't take much. When I started working with them on math, I discovered he was math-phobic.  He's a bright kid. There was no reason for that. It took less than an hour, distributed over two sessions, to free him from his fear.  Getting kids comfortable with not knowing is a biggy.

    Shauntel had a list of six kids for me.  I started second-grade KJ on comprehension. KJ is missing language and background information. Teaching her is a kick. I love watching her face as she takes in the new information. She is a good learner.  She will do well once she learns to speak better English. While the kids in the housing unit mostly speak English, KJ, as most of the kids I work with at Ulu Wini, still speaks another language at home. It limits her. I did a mini-lesson of the -er ending, as in teacher, dancer, singer, or, in this case, listener.

   I had second-grade SL, KJ's younger sister.  She is the one who I thought might be totally out of it because of her blank, wide-eyed stare.  It was as if nothing went in.  KJ asked me if she could work together with her sister. As I saw it, KJ was so far ahead that it was pointless. KJ told me she saw her sister reading at home. Instead of the word lists I had been using with SL, I used Carpenter's Sassy the Cat story, the first in the collection. ST read that easily, except she read it word by word as if it were a list instead of sentences.  I demonstrated the difference in each case.  Connected speech requires a small change in pitch and maintaining the mouth shape at the end of a word, impacting the production of the first sound of the next word. 

   I pushed another change in SL. I pushed her not to give her answer in a questioning voice, which impacted her by making her teachers think she was stupid. I find it annoying as hell.

    Then, I had third-grade PL.  She is walking immaturity. I started her on the Carpenter stories, hoping to get her to read at least three of them.  "Can I read this one and be done?"  Sure.

    Next was first grade AM.  She presents as a 'bright' child.   I taught her how to determine the number of syllables in a word from the sound. His comprehension was excellent.

    I  wanted to work on comprehension with second-grade JM, but I couldn't get the computer to respond. I had some stories printed; I used those.  The story was about a cat that ran up a tree when frightened by a dog. Jeff made several tries to get it down before he was successful. This passage was graded at first grade, and her reading was slow.  Her comprehension was worse.  Did she make pictures in her head as she read?  No. So we worked on that.  I understand some people don't visualize the story as they read. I have no idea how they can understand it if they don't.    I'm not saying there isn't a way to do it; I can't imagine what it is.

   The sixth student on the list was the child who was sufficiently handicapped to ride the special bus and be in an inclusive classroom instead of a mainstream one. In other words, she is kept out of the regular classroom with all the 'normal' children are in with special help provided. She is in a special classroom with only students who are disabled in one way or another. Judy's grandson, who has a two-month-old's physical, intellectual, and emotional development, is in the regular classroom with the 'normal' children. He has to have a trained nurse in attendance at all times. He's in second grade now.  I don't know how much longer it can last.

   A Kindergartener, DW, asked if he could work with me. He wasn't interested in learning anything. He just wanted to play with the slime. I told him he had to work on something. We agree on speech sounds. He got his hands deep into the slime.  It stuck to his hands. We spent a good five minutes trying to get his hands free of the stuff.  I asked Shauntel if the slime got stickier with time. Yep. I threw the bucket into the trash with plans to buy a new one.