Mike's death; Betty's life...

Monday, November 2, 2026

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

I slept well but woke in a pit of a mood. My bad moods seemed to be getting worse, and I was concerned I might be digging myself into a hole. There are life circumstances I can't change that make me sad, but I have enough of a life to be content.

I had time in the morning, so Elsa and I visited Paulette to get more Kangen water. When we arrived, we had trouble finding even one stuffed mouse. Elsa located one on the end table next to the rocking loveseat. Paulette threw that for a while. Then, Elsa couldn't find it. Paulette peered over the railing of the lanai. There, it lay on the ground below. Paulette headed down with Elsa to get it. When she came up, she said there must be another one around. She found a white one; then, she had a black and a white one. Before she left, she located a green one. Elsa was in heaven.

I had to leave before 11:30 because I had an appointment with Tomi, the craniosacral therapist. I had to drop off Elsa before heading out. As I made the U-turn to go down her driveway, Paulette told me to turn off the motor and come look at the front of my car. I had smashed into some shrubs, making the turn. I assumed there would be some damage. She said no, it was something else; I was to come and look. When I did, I saw a narrow black plastic strip that resembled a refrigerator gasket. It didn't look like a serious problem. I was in a hurry. I would drive until the car told me it would quit. Then I'd call Tomi to tell her I had a problem and couldn't make it.

After dropping Elsa off at our house, I drove to my appointment. I got there 10 minutes early. Tomi's energy is spectacularly good. She works in silence, focusing on physical changes. She asked if the left hip replacement caused problems with my right hip, which I was having some issues with now. I told her the doctor told me that the arthritis was worse in my right hip than in my left before the surgery. The pain had been worse in my left hip because an accident had caused an angled joint. Also, my left thigh was visibly different from my right one in my twenties. The left thigh was slender; the right looked beefy. I preferred the look of the left. It was the underused leg. It was the disparity of use that caused my hip problems, back problems, neck problems, etc. This problem had been in the making for a long time.

While Tomi thought the surgery caused problems in other joints, I thought it caused changes in the body that people didn't consider significant. They were just relieved to be out of pain. I had to look away as I watched people move after the surgery. I saw how they were moving their bodies, freshly liberated from pain. I saw how that movement was impacting their other joints. Ow!! No wonder they needed a second hip replacement and two knee replacements to boot.

After my session with Tomi, I drove right to the Kia service station. Joe took one look at me and gave a wan smile. I told him I thought my car yearned to be home at Kia. No, it was not the old problem the shop had worked on for several years.

A mechanic came out, bent down, and peered under my car. While the gasket was no longer visible from the front, he could see it. He said it was installed during the manufacturing process to protect certain parts of the car. Joe asked if I wanted him to remove it. He said he couldn't guarantee it wouldn't do damage to something else. If I kept driving with it dragging, it would eventually catch on to something and detach. I chose that.

I immediately went to Ulu Wini to tutor the kids in the low-income housing units. I was there by 1:30, expecting to have time to work on my updates. However, I saw fourth-grade LK playing on the playground equipment. I asked him what he was doing at home. He had a doctor's appointment. Did he want to work with me? Yes, he needed help with comprehension. I did a fourth-grade IXL exercise for the main idea. He had no concept of categorization. When I asked him what apples, bananas, and oranges all had in common, he had no idea what I was talking about. I don't think he was ever exposed to the concept of categorization.

I ran into the same problem with second-grade JM. I see this problem a lot, not just among children from poor families with little education, but among my white middle-class students whose parents went to college. Huh?

I finally had second-grade KK. He also wanted to work on the spin release. I thought he would fight against it. There's no way I would force this on someone; it's too profound a change. I also told him I didn't feel well enough to work with him. I need to be alert and watchful of the children's reactions during that process.

I also discussed the warts on the palm of his hand. He couldn't work with the slime because they were contagious. He first told me he was born with them. I took a close look at his hand. Yes, he had some 'freckles' on his palm, but that didn't explain the grey, rough, raised spots. He said his mom would take him to the doctor when they had the money to have them lasered off. They had been diagnosed as warts. I said they could buy something at the drugstore. He said they didn't have an extra dollar. They had no money. I first volunteered to buy it for him. Then I thought better of that idea. I could get in trouble. I spoke to the director of the center. She said he had insurance. She would talk to the mom.

I had my second session with a fourth-grade OW. He tests at the high third-grade level, the mid-fourth-grade level, and the low fifth-grade level. I turned my attention to comprehension and his insecurity. I did the WbyW activity, which uses questions instead of sentence diagramming to figure out the relationships between parts of sentences and sentences to each other. He did very well. I encouraged him to form the questions. I never do that. He's the only student I could do it with without extensive training.

As we worked, he frequently glanced to his left. I asked him what he was looking at. He said his younger brother was a few months younger than him and in the same grade. His mother wasn't asking for help with that brother. Oh boy. Is that brother soaring ahead? That would be hard on the nerves. I did some EFT tapping with him to relieve his fear of making mistakes.

OW had closed the door to his room to prevent his brother from sticking his head in. But then, at the end of the session, it sounded like his mother was in the room, talking to someone else, perhaps his brother. It was disturbing.

I had my second session with fifth-grade ZN at the end of the day. He didn't want to read the two Carpenter stories we had worked on so far. he wanted to work on the sight word list. He got stuck several times on the first twenty-five words, which are the most frequently appearing words in any text in the English language. That's how the Fry list was compiled.

The original sight word list was published by Dolch in 1936. He was a proponent of the Whole Word method, a precursor of the Whole Language Method. Both methods opposed the use of phonics in teaching reading. Fry's was the result of a computer program that ordered the words by their frequency of appearance in the text. The word 'oil' is 78 out of 1000. Words 1-100 are on the first-grade list. I doubt the word can be found in any first-grade children's literature. The literature used to compile the list includes newspapers. Oil was a high-frequency word when the list was generated. What would its place on the list be now?

I don't remember how the next activity came about. ZN must have proposed it. He wanted to spell words. I got a surprise, more like a shock. His spelling was excellent.

He generated the list. Basketball, meeting, Hot Wheels, Hawaiian, light, and Happy Valentine's Day. Basketball, meeting, Hot Wheels, Hawaiian, light, and Happy Valentine's Day. He spelled everyone correctly.

Seeing how well he spelled, I dictated words to him from a second-grade text to see how he would do: A baby only three days old likes water that is sweet better than water that is not sweet. Even a baby can tell one kind of water from the other. Except for spelling the final -er as -ar, he spelled every word correctly but couldn't read the words he had just spelled. Oh, boy.

I remembered Aylett Cox, the woman who created the Alphabetic Phonics program, where I got my certification as an Orton-Gillingham instructor, saying that she could not help children who could spell better than they could read. Let's see if I can find a solution.

Monday, April 14, 2025

After returning from my morning walk, I affixed a battery to the hedge trimmer and set it near the shrub I planned to work on. This would push me to get it done. Then, I went inside, finished my morning NY Times puzzles, and ate my breakfast. Did I hear rain? I sure did. I rushed out to save my hedge trimmer. It poured for most of the day, so much for my gardening plans. I devoted the day to indoor chores. I washed the floors.

At 3 pm, I had fifth-grade GV. I reviewed adding fractions with unlike denominators. Forget it! Well, he had. I started from scratch. He got it with a bit of refreshing. I then taught him how to reduce fractions. I started with the number line. That didn’t work for division as it did for multiplication when finding the common denominator. What did I do when I was a kid? Ah. I started with the two times table. Did two go into both the numerator and denominator? If not, I tried 3, and so on, and he got that.

I discovered that he didn’t know that all numbers ending in an even number are divisible by two, regardless of the size or nature of any other digit in the number. He said, “Cool!”

I impressed upon him that when reducing fractions, he had to do the same thing to the denominator as he did to the numerator to assure the numbers were equal. He showed me! He subtracted five from each. That didn’t work. I knew it didn’t, but I couldn’t explain why in a way that would be easy for him to understand.

I did show him why the equations are equal when multiplied by the same number. I drew a rectangle, divided it into three equal parts, and then multiplied the numerator and denominator by 20. I showed him that the total quantity didn’t change; it was only the size of the pieces inside the rectangle that did. Let’s see what he remembers from what was covered on Wednesday.

Fourth-grade LG was scheduled. He didn’t respond. I called. His mom had left him with her phone. Every time he connected, he was bounced off. He probably was doing something wrong. When I spoke to his mom later, she said they wouldn’t try that again. I would prefer if she observed him and saw what he did wrong.

At the end of the day, I had fifth-grade ZN. His mom was still sick and didn’t have the time or energy to buy the tablet. ZN had turned a corner. He is more responsive. The Carpenter material, which is very low level, suits him well. He proposed timing his reading to see how he progressed. He read the first two stories, Sassy the Cat and The Little Lad. He read all the words from Sassy the Cat from a list in random order. He didn’t want to read the third in the series.

I broached his ‘memory’ problem. He said his mom thought he had one, but he didn’t. I showed him the first twenty-five words from the Fry Sight Word Lists. He misread two immediately. His mom said his short-term memory works, but he couldn’t recognize words he hadn’t seen in a while. Reading the Carpenter material boosted his memory because the words were embedded in a story. He could memorize the story.

Sunday, April 13, 2025

I wasn’t doing my yoga exercises regularly as I used to. I found it exhausting to do my exercises and then my long walk around the block first thing in the morning. I changed my schedule and did the walk first, and the stretching exercises after. While I no longer dragged myself around the block, I was still exhausted after doing both.

Thanks to Facebook shorts, I found arm exercises good for my circulation, blood pressure, and sleep. In the past, I heard that doing exercises right before bed disturbed sleep. This is the opposite message, which matched my experience. I switched and did those yoga exercises, including the Chinese gymnastic arm exercises, right before I went to bed. The results were spectacular. I couldn’t even stay awake to do a bit of reading before I turned out the lights. I then slept long and deeply. I highly recommend it.

I was ready to leave for church before 8:30, my usual Sunday departure time. Knowing I had extra time, I dawdled and left later than usual. When I arrived at church, I was surprised to see the parking lot packed. I found what I thought was a spot at the front of the church. I pull up over a curb and a peninsula of lawn to park. I made it to a seat on the lanai just before the beginning of the celebration. Someone handed me a palm frond. Ah. It was Palm Sunday. No wonder the church was packed. I didn’t sit in my usual spot.

I wound up sitting with the family with the disabled son. The parents had considered having me work with him. I found he could learn but needed very explicit instructions. How much he could learn would be another matter. He was eight and enjoyed stacking blocks in a manner appropriate for a three —or four-year-old. I saw some glimmering of intelligence. I could have accomplished something, but not without a lot of support at home.

The mother insisted there was nothing wrong with him. He was just a boy, and boys developed more slowly than girls. More recently, she admitted to seeing her son the way the school staff saw him, which was in accord with the results of two I.Q. tests.

I spotted another child with a serious problem. I initially saw the mother and grandmother with the child shortly after she was born. They sat on the lanai near me. Neither woman did anything to support the baby’s head. It lolled back, leaning on the baby’s upper back. It was distressing to watch. I had to force myself to look away. The grandmother handled the child the same way the mother did. The mother was one of four children. The grandmother should have known better. My mother drilled the need to support a baby’s head into me by the time I was seven.

The child I observed yesterday was approximately six months old and shouldn’t have needed support, but she did. At least now, the mother and grandmother made efforts to support her head, even if they were inconsistent. The baby could make minimal efforts to support her head, but nothing appropriate to her age.

Besides the problems with her head, she had a small bandage on her left cheek with a thread that went around to her ear. I had no idea what that was about. She coughed periodically, and the mother and grandmother’s reactions showed alarm. I suspect from their behavior that the baby had trouble swallowing.

I didn’t stick around after Mass the way I usually do. I went right out to my car. I had been down, feeling so lonely. Usually, contact with others lifts me up. While being around others has helped for the last two weeks, it was also a strain. That’s how I felt today. Besides, I had left my phone in my unlocked car. I wanted to get to it before someone else did.

My phone was fine, but I was happy to be in my car. I discovered I had parked in a spot appropriate for a motorcycle but not my SUV. I sat there for quite a while, waiting for the traffic to stop so I could maneuver myself out of my parking spot without ripping up the lawn I was half parked on with my rear wheels. Once the exiting traffic slowed to a trickle, my car and the car immediately in front of me were the only cars left. It probably belonged to one of the Deacons staying around for the next Mass. I backed up just far enough to pull forward and safely past the car parked in front of me.

I went to the KTA. Progresso lentil soup was still on sale. I bought four. I also bought a small container of McCormick’s garlic powder. The large container I purchased from Costco had congealed into a brick. It’s hard to chop even with a knife point. I remembered to pick up a bottle of Clorox. I use it every time I shower to dip my toes to combat toenail fungus and rinse the glass doors. I checked out the bakery. Judy told me KTA sold donuts to die for. I really don’t need donuts, but I checked them out. They use an old-fashioned recipe. I bought a box of donut holes. Hopefully, I won’t make this a habit.

I drove to the Unity Church for the crystal healing they sponsor every second Sunday of the month. When I entered, I was surprised to see the chairs still set up for the service and not cleared for the healing. We all lie on the floor so Denise can lay the crystal on our bodies. Diane greeted me and said the event had been canceled because Denise was sick. I turned around and headed for Target.

I thought I would check out the availability of Progresso’s lentil soup there. Every time I went to the store for several weeks, the shelf hadn’t been restocked. It hadn’t been today, either. I suspect there won’t be any more Progresso soups on their shelves. I hope it’s just that Target had discontinued carrying them versus going out of business. I picked up four frozen dinners on sale. I always check out their sales.

I texted fourth-grade MH’s dad to say I would be free for a session after 2 p.m. I didn’t hear from him until shortly before 2 today. He and his wife were both off-island. Could they reschedule? In this case, they would skip the session for the week. Sure.

One of the advantages of working with Zoom from home is that if someone cancels, my chores and pleasures are at hand. The adjustment is easy.

I did work on the 2019 blog entries. About a year ago, I printed all the entries for 2019 and had Office Depot bind them. I never took the book out of the bag after picking it up. About a month ago, I did. I checked the last page only to discover that Microsoft Word had deleted all the entries after September 30. I reclaimed them through the blogger.com entries. I could also have reclaimed them from my Yahoo emails from 2019. I reviewed them in Grammarly before adding them to the Blog Book 2019 file and the Blogger.com site. I’m slowly working my way through. I was just about finished with October and only have November and December’s entries to do. I assume all electronic devices will be dead and gone. I can read these in my old age instead of looking through pictures. Something just occurred to me. My sight won’t be good; I’d better reprint it in a large font instead of the small one I used to save paper.

Saturday, April 12, 2025

I didn’t work with the Twins again this morning. I signed on to Zoom at 8 am, and nothing. Mama K called to say she couldn’t wake her older daughter to get her to sign the girls into the Zoom meeting. I do not know why they don’t teach the girls to do it independently. There’s a good chance they will ‘forget’ to do it if left to their own devices, but how’s that different from them missing their appointment because their sister slept in.

I woke up in a down mood, qualifying for depression, except all I needed to get my mood to shift was half an hour of contact with another human being. I’m a true extrovert. My vision of hell is being surrounded by introverts who object to my behavior and don’t think they should have to tell me why. It’s the “something’s wrong with you if you don’t give me what I want” philosophy of life. My mother held that vision. I couldn’t imagine anyone actually believing that until she finally convinced me toward the end of her life.

Now, there are circumstances where the assumption of absolute authority is an appropriate position in military combat. In preparation for that, personnel are trained to say “Yes, Sir,” or “Yes, Ma’am” to everything. The highest ranking person says, “The moon is made out of blue cheese,” the only appropriate response is “Yes, sir!” Everyone is cannon fodder. What they know, think, or feel is irrelevant. Their inner life is as irrelevant as the inner life of a car. The only question is whether it will serve to forward a military action. You have to love it when people hold that they are entitled to that degree of self-abnegation from others.

As you can see, this is an issue I have been subjected to. I’m delighted to say I didn’t return the favor when it was my turn to be the one with the power. You’re not to confuse that with the thought that I made no errors. Of course, I did. I don’t even have to know what they were. I’m human; I made mistakes. But I didn’t hold it as a concept that my mother was supposed to do everything my way.

Dean and Nina came today as usual for our game of Sorry. I won handily. Nina, who usually wins, only had two pawns on the board. It was a weird game.

Dean told the story of his early school experience he had told before. When he was in second grade, his teacher sent him for special help in reading. When it came time for him to read, he would stammer or not read. Dean didn’t have a speech problem; he was painfully shy. The teacher who evaluated him discovered he read on a 6th-grade level.

Dean said that when his class went to the library, his teacher tried to direct him to grade-level books. In the meantime, he was reading the encyclopedia at home, even checking out references to other entries.

Dean’s experience brings me back to the conflict we have about wanting to be seen and not wanting to be seen. Shy people hide and don’t want to be seen. However, he wanted the teacher to treat him as someone who read the encyclopedia even though he looked like someone who was below grade level.

Friday, April 11, 2025

I had an appointment with Shelly, my long-term therapist/ life coach. I told her about my experience in the session with Rob. I discussed the impact of the feelings of dismissal and disapproval because I couldn’t achieve dramatic improvement in a few sessions on my upper back as well as in my gut when I thought of ZN’s teachers thinking of me as a fake because I couldn’t get a dramatic improvement in a few sessions. The feeling on my upper back was like being beaten down. That’s what my mom’s constant verbal assault felt like. I ducked my head but could not avoid the ‘blows’ that rained down. She delivered each comment with a sharp intensity. It felt like being tasered.

We also discussed narcissism at length, the difference between victims who can’t see beyond their own noses and lay trips on others and people who need to have total control over everything and take from others. For Shelly, it was two types of people. For me, it’s on a continuum. All wounded animals are self-centered and dangerous.

A drowning man tries to drown his savior in his attempts to save himself. Most of the harm committed in this world is a result of an injured psyche. Most of us are guilty of small misdemeanors. Then, some have no inner life. Put Donald Trump in a closed room in sweat without any accouterments of wealth and power. How long do you think he would last? He’s constantly battling against annihilation. Understanding that doesn’t mean the poor man should be given free rein. Understanding is not the same as agreement.

I also believe we can’t battle against enemies we don’t know well. Football teams watch videos of opposing teams. Know your enemy if you can’t avoid him.

I talked about my anger at people who laid trips on me. People who like me see me as one of the most unjudgmental people they know. Mike saw me that way. I have one relative who dislikes me because I’m not judgmental enough. Other than her, there are people who live in fear of my judgments. It’s their problem. They all have to stay away from me for my sake as well as theirs.

Another one that drives me crazy is the accusation of self-centeredness. Mike saw me as someone who would be as concerned about his needs as I would be about my own. I don’t think he ever changed his mind about that. Does that mean we were reconciled on all points of difference? Don’t be ridiculous. It was just good enough. Good enough is my idea of a very high standard.

I went on to describe my distress with people who refused to work toward reconciliation, especially those who judge my character as morally defective, as my mother did. She constantly accused me of wanting to hurt her. I just wanted her to honor my point of view. It wasn’t till the end of her life that I finally realized what I wanted was impossible. She perceived any thought, feeling, perception, no less opinion that differed from hers as a personal affront. I was ‘putting her down,’ as she put it. Holy cow! How could anyone believe such a thing?

Shelly started expressing a thought and stopped because I was prattling on. I told her I wanted her to share it. As I felt with Rob, I felt anything that came out of her mouth could be helpful. She said I was obsessed with people understanding my point of view- not necessarily agreeing, just seeing what it was. That snapped my suspenders. I think Obsessed is accurate. I thought immediately of the message of Buddhism: suffering is caused by my craving and aversion. Obsession is craving. I have to figure out how to tone that down.

I managed not to push my mom when she lived with us for the last 18 years of her life. I knew pressuring someone did nothing. Still, I wrestled with the woman who had power over me when I was a child. That wasn’t the same woman who lived with us and whom I cared for. She did better as one cared for, the child than the caretaker, the adult. I’m glad we both had that time together.

Fifth-grade GV was up for his session. Before we got to work, I shared a moment with his grandmother. We shared our love for well-written books. I recommend Laurie R King, particularly the Sherlock Holmes series. The language in her books taking place in more recent times isn’t as good. It suggests that language has been downgraded in the last century. The difference in vocabulary use of metaphors and turns of phrase are remarkably poorer now than were then. She recommended books by Robertson Davies. His books are philosophical and brilliantly written. I was surprised he never won a Pulitzer.

GV started the session by saying he wanted help on a personal matter. His younger brother, five years his junior, has found a new way to annoy him. He keeps asking him why and won’t leave GV alone. His mother insists it’s just sibling issues. Yes, siblings may fight, but in a good relationship, they reconcile. There is no reconciliation between these boys. There is nothing positive in this relationship. It looks like the parents make no effort to negotiate boundaries. From how GV presents it, his younger brother gets to do whatever he wants. I suggested he ask his parents what to do. I anticipated they would say ‘ignore him.” I told him to ask them how to do that. I once recommended that GV find a way to interact positively with his brother. When he approached the younger boy, he rejected GV. It does not sound like ‘normal’ sibling relations to me.

GV then said he wanted to work on something he came across in a video game he was playing with ZN. It was the addition of fractions with like and unlike denominators. First, did he know what the numerator and denominator stood for, no less their relationship? He didn’t.

The denominator is a label. You can add 1 apple + 1 apple and get two apples. Likewise, you can add 1 sixth +1 sixth and get 2 sixths. I can’t add apples and pears or sixths and fourths unless I find a superordinate category to which they both belong. With apples and pears, it’s fruit. With sixths and fourths, we have to find the common denominator.

GV had a better strategy for figuring out the common denominator than mine. Well, it is not a better strategy but a better way of representing it. When I was his age, I wrote out all the multiplication facts” 1x4=4, 2x4=8, etc. The strategy his teacher taught was a number line. There’s less writing involved. GV understood how to find the lowest number, which was the same on both lines. As before, the lightbulb went on.

4 /4 8 12 16 20

6 /6 12 18

We’ll see how well this carries over in our next session.

Thursday, April 10, 2025

I met with the 80s Club for the first time in a while. I learned about the Club from a woman who lives in Hawaii and whom Judy knew. I hadn't participated because of scheduling conflicts and because it wasn't particularly interesting. The leader said they would discuss AI, so it was worth a try.

There were seven participants, including the leader. Five of them were men. I discovered today they all knew each other from college. They were fraternity brothers and the University of Connecticut, UCon. The leader told me to stop talking three times because they needed the time to complete the agenda. I thought perhaps I had spoken too long. It was possible. But they cut off the other woman, too. She barely spoke at all. She answered direct questions when asked. Someone asked her about using squash to make a pizza crust. She answered that question and then went on in more detail. One of the men ignored her and talked over her. She shut up. Another talked a great deal on subjects that were not on the agenda. The leader had no problems with him blathering on. It finally dawned on me that none of these men's wives participated in this 'Club.' Guess what? I will not be participating again. I doubt they are even aware of their prejudice. They may not realize it, but they don't want women in their Club. So be it. I get nothing of value from it.

Today, I called Amazon customer service about an email I received from them saying my account had been compromised and would be locked down immediately. I had to call within three days, or it would be locked down permanently. I suspected it was a scam, but I checked by calling Amazon directly. Good move! That email used a very convincing version of the Amazon logo. This email came right after I found a suspicious charge on my credit card. The credit card company canceled my current credit card. I don't know how many times this has happened now.

It was a Ulu Wini day. I forgot there was no school, and Shauntel would run a program from 1 to 4 p.m. A few kids were in attendance. Before checking if anyone wanted to work with me, I didn't take my briefcase out. Also, I had to talk to Shauntel about a health problem I discovered.

I saw a wart on a girl's palms sometime last week. On Tuesday, I worked with a boy who had several of them on his palm. I checked if the warts were contagious. Indeed, they are. Common warts are caused by the papillomavirus, also called HPV. They are spread by skin-on-skin contact and by touching the same objects. While not dangerous, they are contagious. I freaked when I saw them because I had warts when I was 12. They mysteriously disappeared. From what I read, they do that. I have no idea how I got them. No one else in my family caught them from me. They were ugly. As much as this problem has implications for the community center at Ulu Wini, it has consequences for the school.

First-grade PV wanted to work on memorizing words. I assumed she had some visual distortion problems from the hesitant way she was reading. I asked her if the letters moved around in her head or on the paper. They moved around in her head. I drew my standard examples of movement patterns: spiraling from out to in either clockwise or counterclockwise or spiraling from in to out either clockwise or counterclockwise. Hers moved from out to the center in a counterclockwise direction. The next question was, did the spin slow down or speed up? The usual pattern is the spin that moves from the center out speeds up, and the one that moves from the outer rim to the center slows down. I've only seen one exception.

PV's followed the typical pattern. I asked her if she tried to make the spin speed up. She nodded yes. I told her to watch the spin and see what it did. Find it interesting. She did it till it stopped. The kids are always surprised to see this work. Once it stops, the motion continues at a functional speed. There is always movement in our brains; it's constant. It's a good bet that all that movement is in a spiraling pattern. There's a functional speed and at least two dysfunctional speeds: too fast and too slow. When our brains work properly, we don't notice what they do. If it ain't broken, don't notice it. We are aware of the dysfunction.

We're all familiar with dysfunctional brain patterns. When we're overwhelmed with information, we complain our heads are spinning, or we go brain-dead and no longer understand anything. Thinking about it now, I wonder if my brain slowed down or sped up so fast that one time, I couldn't process what I heard. I couldn't make sense of a single word. It was a weird experience. I didn't feel afraid, but my nervous system had what was a fear response. I often ask my kids if they feel afraid. They say no. I have to remember how I felt on that occasion.

I worked with fifth-grade ZN when I got home. He was still on his mom's phone. It's okay when he was well rested. I worked with the Carpenter material, starting with the first story. I reviewed all the words in the -at word family before he started reading it. He did a better job. Then, I introduced the second story, "The Little Lad." Before he read it, I had him identify every word with -ad in it. The letters spun once while reading the first story he was familiar with; they spun three times while working on the second. The spinning happens more often if he's not familiar with the text. That suggests it's stress-related on a psychological and neurological level. I don't know which is worse.

Wednesday, April 9, 2025

I had the fifth-grade Twins today after missing them on Saturday. Mama K explained that she and Papa K had been paddling on Saturday. Their older daughter SR had been on an overnight. No one was home, and the Twins had to accompany their parents.

I worked with Twin E first. In our last session, she started writing a piece about the game Four Way Capture the Ball. I pulled more information out of her today. She drew a picture of the field, a square divided into four squares. Each team owned one of the squares. Each team has six members: three for offense, two for defense, and one to guard the 'prisoners,' members of the opposing teams. While her drawing was informative, her verbal descriptions weren't. We still have more work.

Twin A's biggest weakness is decoding multisyllabic words. Where in the past, she fell asleep from anxiety when I worked on the structured steps for decoding, she remained bright-eyed and bushy-tailed today. This is a great change.

At 3:00, I had fifth-grade GV. His mom brought his report card and the results of his dad's consultation with his teachers. They praised his improvement over the last term, especially in his comprehension. However, his teachers still felt he performed at a 4th-grade level. They didn't specify at what level of fourth grade. Performance scores are by year and month. There's a difference between the beginning of fourth grade and the end.

GV's teachers were more concerned about his performance in math. He was missing the basics. GV wanted to work on decimals. I don't know how it came out, but he had problems adding problems with more than three digits. I wrote an addition problem with two numbers in the one's place. Easy peasy. Then I added numbers in the ten's place and had him add those; then the hundreds place, the thousands place, etc, one at a time. He said that was easy, but it looked like a block of numbers when he got a problem at school. He couldn't do that. I explained he did it just as he had done the problem I had created, one column at a time. The light bulb went on. Kids don't know how to break a problem down.

When GV learns, he learns deeply. He requires a period of silence while he processes the new information. He is usually the one who tells me it's time to end the session. Today, he continued staring at the screen for a good five minutes after the session was up. I told him he could look as long as he liked. It was me who walked away and took care of some other business, leaving him to it. He made my day.

I finally had fourth-grade LG. His report card also suggested he needed help with basic math. He said he had problems with subtraction. He complained that one of his math tutors was mean. She yelled at him for using his fingers. I gave him the problem 8-5=. He held up eight fingers, lowered 5, and noted what was left. No wonder the tutor was yelling at him. I showed him how to count up from 5 to 8 and see how many steps he took. He freaked, looked away from the screen, and then actually walked away, taking the phone with him. He freaks whenever he's not sure of what he's doing. He said he doesn't like being wrong. Join the human race. None of us like being wrong; we must learn to live with it. We have to know that our lives are not at stake because we aren't perfect. The person who feels perfection is a basic requirement is doomed to a difficult life. He told me his sister cries every time she gets something wrong.

I reminded LG he didn't feel that way when he built his computer. He was not only confident but thought nothing about making mistakes and trying again. To be good at anything, you have to feel that way. The path to success is built on mistakes. You can tell if someone is good at something when they are comfortable with their mistakes.

I instructed him to breathe in through his nose and out through his mouth, anchor himself to his seat, and keep his eyes on the screen while I demonstrated the process of subtracting by counting up from the lower number; he didn't have to do anything but watch. The 'mean' tutor had been trying to teach him this. She got frustrated with his lack of cooperation. I have the advantage because I address his psychological condition directly, which most teachers are not comfortable doing. Everything is dealt with as a behavior problem. He did as I instructed, stayed calm, and watched. Then he got it. He said, "That's neat!" Done!

I had him read a short passage at the end of the session. Holy cow! It's like he forgot everything. He says the school has him in a reading group where he has no access to reading material higher than a second-grade level. Given what I saw today, that's possible. It would be hard to know how much information is lost and how much is a result of panic.

I was supposed to have fifth-grade ZN at 5:15, but his mom canceled because of a medical emergency. I will meet with him tomorrow instead.

I called Mama K to ask about the plans for Saturday. She thought her older daughter would be home and be able to get the girls on to the Zoom meeting at 8 a.m. She told me a friend she met at Paddling planned to email me asking for tutoring for her son. When I checked, there was an email from a woman with a 10-year-old who needed a lot of help with reading and some with math. We're scheduled for this Saturday after I work with the Twins.

Tuesday, April 8, 2025

I had an appointment with Rob, the Kaiser-recommended therapist. He is proving quite impactful; I'm not sure yet to what end. Last week, when I told him to say whatever came to mind when I asked him for a suggestion to deal with my fear of a positive reaction to my work, Perseus's mirror came to mind. He used it to shield himself from Medusa's deadly visage. I came up with a mirrored shield protecting my abdomen. It immediately felt good; I felt protected. I saw the mirror reflecting the strength of others rather than their grotesqueness, as with Medusa. I'd be okay if I could keep their focus on their strengths rather than mine. It wasn't quite as effective as I had hoped because the action was driven by fear, a need to protect myself. Anything not driven by genuine love is bound to fail.

Due to my struggles with fifth-grade ZN, I feared condemnation by two teachers who knew him and me. These two also know fifth-grade GV. Neither said anything positive about his progress. Now, one is a substitute and wouldn't know. The other is his classroom teacher. She would. She felt she could say nothing. She didn't even say he had made progress. My ego isn't that secure. My mother assured me repeatedly that no one liked me, and if they said anything good about me, it was a sure sign they didn't care about me. Holy cow! What a message to impart to your children!

Rob pushed me to deal with how I felt about others who made me feel inadequate. Like everyone does. No one likes that feeling. While I try not to act out or believe anyone benefits from my acting it out, my innards churn. I hold a rage at my mother and others who have delighted in putting me down. I would love to rip them open and make them see their negative intentions. We're all vulnerable. We act out in different ways. Then, we end up hurting people, which doesn't feel good. Some feel justified in judging me. I try to stick to what I like and what I don't like without taking judgment beyond that. You know the adage, "Judge, and you will be judged." Judgment is separate from liking and not liking. Judgment assaults a person's character. Judgment expands to cover a broader swath than a single act or failure. Failure is a consequence of life. The road to success is through successfully dealing with repeated failures. It's still hard on the nerves.

As the session was ending, Rob went on about something. I had something I wanted to say. I told him to shut up; it was my session. I meant it in an almost playful way. The question is, did he take it that way? I felt comfortable speaking up, even in a blunt way. I love that he goes on. I like the way his mind works. I listen intently when he talks for something that I can use. I need to make that clear to him in our next session.

I was tired but unable to sleep after the session. It must have hit me hard.

I dragged myself to Ulu Wini at two. I was not looking forward to the session. The kids didn't arrive until 2:45. Shauntel told me their regular bus driver got a new route closer to his home. They didn't have a driver to cover the Ulu Wini kids. A driver who already had a route picked up this one. He had to drive his usual kids home and return to school to get the Ulu Wini kids and deliver them.

It had poured earlier in the day up where I live. It's unusual for it to rain at the shoreline. The higher you go, the more rain you get. My dentist lives at 1500 feet. The whole extended family lives in the same house or near each other. Rocky, the dental hygienist and a family member, told me she has clouds in her home. She doesn't see it as a cloud when looking at her furniture. But when she looks out a window, she can see they are in a cloud. The moisture level is off the charts. There's a dehumidifier in every room.

Today was an unusual day. It had rained hard at Ulu Wini, which is considerably lower down the mountain than where I live. It was still raining lightly when I arrived. It stopped shortly before the bus pulled up. The table I used was half-covered with water. I wiped it down with paper towels. Water dripped down in one spot the whole time I was there. I had to be careful to keep my computer and paperwork dry.

Hands shot up when Shauntel asked who wanted to work with me. The first student was second-grade NH. She wanted to work on multiplication. I wrote two addition problems and asked her which could be made into a multiplication problem. 3+3= or 3+2=. She chose the latter. Not a clue. It didn't take much for her to get the idea. She does much better in math than reading. While she struggled to memorize sight words (she only knew the word the when we started), she had the multiplication table down pat. It only took a few samples of contrasting addition problems for her to understand how multiplication was a form of addition.

Second-grade JM was next. She made significant progress in her 'comprehension.' I put it in quotes because her comprehension wasn't better; it was her courage to say what she thought the answer was without being afraid she would be wrong. She wrote a story today. It was primitive, but she gave me more complete sentences than many of my students did the first time they did this activity.

Second grade NV's younger sister, PY, was next. She wanted to know how to subtract a two-digit number from a two-digit number. I just drew a line between the tens and ones places and told her to treat them as two separate problems. That works for now. They haven't learned subtraction with regrouping.

A child I hadn't worked with since last year came today. She started saying she wanted to work on division. Since AN was in third grade, I wondered how much division she was required to know. She decided she would rather work on her multiplication tables. The only one she had trouble with was the twelve times table. Many of these children do much better in memorizing math facts than sight words. I showed her how to start with a known math fact like 10x12, which she knows, and add your way up to the math fact you want. As it wound up, she had trouble multiplying 12 x10=. I reviewed multiplying by 10. She had no difficulty multiplying the single digits by ten, just the double digits, etc. Then, I taught her the procedure for multiplying two double-digit numbers. That involves memorizing a procedure. I call it math dancing. Our fingers go through steps just as our feet do when dancing.

A child I had never seen before was next, second grade AB. She had the look of a bright child. She said she had trouble decoding words. When she read to me, it was apparent she was a good reader. It took me a minute to uncover the problem. I finally understood she was one of the kids troubled by English's unorthodox letter/sound correspondence. When I told her there were six possible sounds for the letter a, and she just had to come to terms with that, she got a big smile. That did the trick- at least for now.

Last, I had second-grade KK. Here’s a kid that twists in the wind. He is defensive and can’t hear what I have to say. I don’t know if that is a sign of his intelligence or stubbornness. It’s hard to tell.

Monday, April 7, 2025

I’d been skipping the morning yoga stretches. I was diligent until I decided to walk before I did the stretches instead of after. It’s harder to come home from the walk, feed Elsa, and then start the stretches. I get involved in doing my morning NY Times puzzles, and that’s it for the day.

I had three students. I only have the Twins on Wednesdays for now. Every other afternoon, they’re paddling right after school. I could have them on Saturday mornings, but I have trouble connecting with them when no adult is around to force them to work with me. They’re in fifth grade and already young adults. As far as they’re concerned, they’re done. There was no one to push them to get on today.

I had fifth-grade GV first. He decided he wanted to write another story, but we had to finish editing the last story. I had sent it to his grandmother to edit with him, but she didn’t have Grammarly premium as I did. We decided it would be better if he did his final editing with me.

When writing a new story, he didn’t have anything in mind. I told him to just say the first thing that came to mind. Again, he was stuck. He looked up, saw a plant hanging above him, and offered that. I told him no. It had to be something that came from his mind. There would be a story with that. He finally came up with ‘sharks.’

He recalled a story about a fishing trip with his granddad and his dad, during which they caught two sharks and released them back into the water after taking a picture of one of them. I planned to use this story to cover the main idea, the narrator’s voice, inferencing, compare and contrast, cause and effect, and metaphors and similes. We completed the brainstorming stage. We have our work cut out for us.

GV gave me some information about ZN. They’re in the same class and are friends outside of school. I told GV ZN would be interested in science. His mom told me he wanted to be a marine biologist. When I asked ZN why he wanted to be one, he told me he wanted to invent a device to clean the garbage from the ocean. GV told me this was just something ZN told his mom. He had no interest in science or becoming a marine biologist. He wanted to be a professional gamer. I have no problem with his ambition to be a gamer. That sounded like a normal ambition for an eleven-year-old in this day and age. I had a problem with him telling his mom a story. Why did he feel he had to put on a false front for her? I told GV that while I appreciated his information about ZN, I couldn’t talk about him. I also wouldn’t talk about GV to ZN.

I had fourth-grade LG next. I pushed him to work on the dictation/spelling exercise. I was surprised in our last session to discover he’d slipped back. He actually did quite well today. We did one exercise determining the main idea. He ran into trouble with a word and shut down. He says he does this less in class than he used to. He looked less panic-stricken than he had in the past. I follow the old G.E. slogan, “Progress is our most important product.”

I asked LG what grade level he was reading at in school. He said second grade, which surprised me. I would have thought he would be at least on a third-grade level. He said he was in the same group he had always been in. Everyone was reading better. They started with very easy stories and were reading chapter books by now.

Finally, I talked to ZN’s mom. After our last session, when he started rocking, I felt it was vital that he had a tablet instead of just using the phone for Zoom. I didn’t mention my conversation with GV about him. Today, ZN was calm and focused. There was no fidgeting, no less rocking. He was entirely focused. First, I drew a line illustrating where he was now in his reading and where he wanted to be. While his goal is to be on grade level, my goal is for him to be at least one grade level ahead of his current school year. This is a very bright young man. I made small marks at the bottom end, telling him we had to focus here. There may be leaps of improvement. That would be nice, but no guarantees. I also told him Adolescent D’s story. He was evaluated at a first-grade reading level when I started working with him when he was in 8th grade. It took four years of hard work, with him fighting me every step of the way. ZN asked what D’s reading level was at the end. I told him seventh grade. I made it clear I thought our work together would take time.

I used the Carpenter stories with him again. I pointed out the word family pattern in the story once. He picked up on it after that. He is very quick. He had serious problems that stood in the way of rapid progress. The letters flip around on the page. Most students I’ve encountered with shifting letters have it happen in their minds and not on the page. His flipping appeared on the page. I consider that a more severe condition. He had it happen twice in a short reading passage. The first time, the second and fourth letters in one word changed places. I had tried the spin release with him once. He said it wasn’t effective. Before he did the release, he experienced spinning. Today, he said he has the same flipping but without the spinning. This is a new one for me. He may be making it up, but I have to assume his information is accurate until proven otherwise. I told him to stop reading and wait until the flipping resolved. Ah. If he isn’t reading, how does he know it is resolved? There’s something going on here. The poor kid has a right to his defensiveness. I have to take it one step at a time. He proposed timing his reading of the stories. This is a good sign that this work makes him feel he is accomplishing something.

With ZN I am teaching something closer to Glass Analysis, focusing on the word family patterns, rather than the phonemes. His big problem is with the blending. I’ll work on what I can and go from there.

I habitually put off every task that doesn't require me to do it for someone else. I love writing. I love finding the words to express an idea. It's the most rewarding alone activity. Yet, I put it off, afraid I won't do a good job. While I'm doing it, I don't worry about that. I'm completely engaged.

Sunday, April 6, 2025

Wow! The rim of the mountain and the horizon line over the ocean were crystal clear. The vog was gone- for now. A few days ago, the mountain and the ocean were invisible, shrouded in vog. Even the clouds were obscured. The lava had shot over a thousand feet into the air, delivering enough vog to keep us under the weather for a few days. This is what it was like all the time when I first got here. That eruption started on January 3, 1983, and ended on September 5, 2010. I was disappointed in the poor visibility of the clouds when I arrived, but I didn't know better. Most eruptions last from a day to six months. The one that was going on when we arrived last twenty-six years and nine months. People with respiratory problems suffered.

Today was a do-almost-nothing day. I went to the 9 a.m. mass but didn't eat half a glazed donut as usual during the social hour after mass. I had overindulged in Kirkland's chocolate-covered almonds before I left the house. Judy gave me a quick hello/goodbye after mass. She was shepherding the elect. She led the training classes for those coming into the church this Easter. I left almost immediately.

I drove over to the old industrial area where the Unity church is. No, I wasn't attending a second church service. On the first Sunday of every month, they host a sound bath. I arrived there early for the event scheduled for noon. There's one shaded parking spot in the area. I parked there, turned off the car, opened the windows, pushed back the seat, and napped.

I've become a regular attendee for those events and the crystal healing on the second Sunday. The folks there are friendlier to me than the people at the Catholic Church. I'm not sure if it's the nature of the Catholics or if it has something to do with me. The event was soothing, as usual.

I had fourth-grade MH at four-thirty. She was in a place in the house I'd never seen before. The whole room looked blue, including the ceiling. I asked MH about the color of the room. Indeed, the room was blue, including the ceiling. She was set up with a coloring book and markers. She usually does some drawing while we work. I don't object as long as it's a source of comfort and she pays attention. Today, she wasn't paying as much attention as I'd like. I told her to put her coloring aside. I worked on reading comprehension using IXL selections. We worked on distinguishing between metaphors and similes. The examples were two contrasting sentences. It took repeated tries. I told her repeatedly that the difference was in the wording. If the words like or as are present, they are a simile. If not, it's a metaphor. It wasn't just her coloring that caused the problem. She has issues seeing patterns. Her father reports she is doing well at school. I think they keep me on, hoping I can solve the problem of her faulty thinking skills.

I started listening to Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, a recommendation from fifth-grade GV's grandmother after I told her my criteria for enjoying a book had to do with the language. The language is wonderful, and the themes are deep and delicious. I usually listen to mysteries. This is an absorbing break. I spent most of the day listening to it. I did no gardening work today.

Saturday, April 5, 2025

I was more energetic this morning than yesterday. The vog was less. When I looked straight up into the sky, it was clear. The mountain and the ocean horizon were still shrouded, but it was better.

I was supposed to have the Twins this morning, but that never happened. Mama K said she had set it up. It may be it was dependent on the girls to make the connection. Since they started fighting against it, I imagine they 'forgot.' I had thought Papa K would connect them. I called Mama K and then Papa K to tell them. Papa K called me back late in the day. They both had been paddling. The whole family does this. It's excellent exercise.

When I ran into Mama K at Costco, I was struck by how good she looked. It was from the paddling. While the kids miss tutoring for the paddling, it's fantastic that she has the kids involved. Besides keeping them engaged, movement is good for the brain—that's what the brain was designed for. It's also something the whole family, including parents, is involved in. It's all around a great activity.

Darby, Dean, and Nina counseled me on how to plant the orchids Yvette's friend gave us as gifts for allowing her to park her car in our driveway while she visited family on the mainland. I can appreciate how she feels. Parking at the airport is expensive, but neither Yvette nor I felt she owed us anything.

I heard clattering in the house as I sat on the lanai. I called out to Joseph, wondering what he was doing. When there was no response, I got up to check. Elsa had turned over her water bowl and was pushing it around the tile floor. There was no water on the floor. Her bowl must have been bone dry. This is the first time she's taken action to let me know.

I had a Zoom meeting with a woman I met through the LA tutoring site that served the LA school district. We were both volunteers. I offered to be a resource for tutors who wanted help teaching reading. I got positive feedback from other tutors, but Jana was the only one who asked me to mentor her. She was also the only one who planned to make a living tutoring. She wanted some advice about a child we had discussed before. He's a kindergartener with speech problems. He has particular difficulties pronouncing certain sounds. We worked on the /f/ sound before. I recommended working on muscle coordination without making the sound. Jana reported he had made progress. He was now having trouble producing the /n/ sound. I discussed the mechanics of articulation. The /d/, /t/, and /n/ all use the same articulation. If he can feel where his tongue is when he makes the /t/ or/d/, he can find where to put his tongue. The problem may be coordinating the tongue position with the muscles for nasalization to produce the /n/ sound.

This poor kid is being pushed to know the sounds and blend them. Preschools push early reading. I hate it. For kindergarten children, dealing with decoding and blending because of the school's expectations is nuts. I'm with the philosophy of the Waldroff School; you start teaching word recognition skills at age 7. Before that, you teach verbal expression. Waldroff has teachers 'tell' stories without reading them and encourages the children to retell them. It's fantastic. Every preschool should do this. If children don't have good language skills, they won't understand what they read anyway. Besides that, forcing word recognition in preschools is forcing them into left brain skills before they are ready. Again, I hate it.

Friday, April 4, 2025

The vog was terrible. Both the ocean and the mountain views were obscured. I completed my morning walk by 7, and after feeding Elsa, I went down for a much-needed two-hour nap. This wasn't good.

A tooth bothered me yesterday. I called the dentist after hours and left a message for Vicki, the receptionist. She called me this morning and asked if I could come in by 10:40. As I drove there, I realized I had missed the first session of this series of Hula classes. It was all good. I was too tired to enjoy an hour of Hula. My tooth was fine.

I called Joe, the manager of the Kia service center. Had he figured out how much I owed? He gave me a figure of $800. He itemized the services. The new 12-volt battery was in the list. Wait! I already paid for it. That brought the total down to $500 something. They hadn’t done a routine service when they had the car. It was due. Could I wait now? Yes. I deposited a check at the bank and stopped off at KTA. They had Progresso Lentil soup on sale. Target has been out for over a week. I use lentil soup as my go-to quick meal.

When I returned to the garage, Joe reminded me my car was due for an inspection. Did I want them to do it? Okay. I went to the waiting room and deleted items from my phone storage. I had been told I needed more storage. Joseph showed me where the items in storage were listed under Settings. My word, I had a lot of unused junk. I had 64 GB available. Whereas I was nearly out of the room when I started, I got it down to 43.66 GB. I have more I can delete.

I got home in time for lunch before I had a 3 pm session with fifth-grade GV. His mother sent me his report card yesterday. It reported he had made no progress in reading since his last report card. He was still reading at 4.1, fourth-grade first-month level, and he was missing reading fundamentals. He read passages on the sixth-grade level today. He got stuck on one word, not following my recommended procedure: “Read the word one syllable at a time BEFORE you blend them.” The kids panic, try for an easy FIX, and invariably misread the word. While he may not read at a sixth-grade level, he was certainly not at a beginning fourth-grade level either.

The call was from Shelly. I thought we had a 10 am appointment; it was only 8 am. I reported I was in good shape. Rob is having a positive effect. It's a relief to have a therapist besides Shelly. He's interested without being overly impressed or convinced I'm a total mess or my parents verge on evil. It is so good to have someone relate to me in a manner I'm comfortable with. It's interesting to observe the impact of his response to me. Finally, a therapist who I don't feel is laying a trip on me. This change will result in my seeing Shelly less frequently, for starters. That would be nice. I would hate to lose her completely, but seeing her every other week or once a month sounds good.

I had fourth-grade LG at 4:30. I had him pick a title for the last piece of writing so I could send it to his mom to print. While his mom and dad both express appreciation for how I've helped LG, they don't know how to give him the positive feedback I think would be helpful. They don't print his stories. I think they read them, but they don't give him positive feedback.

After we nailed a title for his story, I pulled up a fourth-grade reading comprehension exercise from IXL. He came across a word that started with ea. He misread the word by a country mile. I asked him what sound the ea might represent. I think I said the long i. OW! I asked him to think of the most likely sound. I reminded him, "When two vowels go walking, the first does the talking." He couldn't apply the saying to the situation at hand. His mind was blank. Nothing made sense; nothing connected. LG's biggest problem is how his mind goes blank when uncertain about an answer. It's driven by pure terror. Through polyvagal theory, I'm learning it's the unmyelinated vagal nerve that drives that response. It is the most primitive of fear responses and challenging to overcome. Several students respond this way to new or old material that isn't immediately recalled.

I talked to LG about this response. He doesn't know why he acts this way, but he agreed that it was an undesirable response and that he wanted to change. I understood that he didn't know how to remedy the situation. He understood I wasn't angry with him for responding that way and was committed to finding a way out. Hopefully, I can help him.

At 5:15, I had my first appointment with fifth-grade ZN. He's the kid who heard about my work from a classmate I tutored and asked his mother to hire me. This is a first. I started our first session as I do with all my students. "Tell me about something you're interested in or do well." Our relationship is one where I'm the expert, and he's the failure; I'm the adult, and he's the child. I want the child to know that I see him as more than his failure. ZN told me about his interest in marine biology. His mother told me he wanted to be a marine biologist. That's why he's so interested in learning to read. ZN told me he wants to invent a machine that will clean all the garbage out of the ocean. He doesn't think small, does he?

After that, I started on the reading lessons. I asked him to spell his name and modeled the syllables, individual sounds, and phonemes. Z is the first letter and the first sound in his name. He had trouble pronouncing it in isolation. I asked him if he would pronounce the /s/ sound. He could, and without my saying anything further, he pronounced the /z/. Wow! To those of you who easily make both sounds, you're thinking, what's the big deal? But it is a big deal if he has trouble. The /s/ and /z/ sounds have the same articulation. That means the tongue is placed against the ridge right behind the teeth: alveolar-labial articulation. While the /z/ uses the same position, it sounds different. What makes that difference? It's called voicing. The /s/ is voiceless, and the /z/ is voiced. A speech sound (a phoneme) is voiced if the vocal chords vibrate. When pronouncing /s/, they don't vibrate. When pronouncing /z/, they do. Place your hand on your throat and make both of those sounds. You'll feel the difference. There are other pairs of sounds distinguished by their voicing: p/b, t/d, k/g, and f/v are some of them. He responded so quickly that he surprised me.

I pulled up the first of the Carpenter stories. It's at a kindergarten level.

Sassy the Cat

Th-e-re w-a-s a b-l-a-ck c-a-t. Th-e c-a-t w-a-s S-a-s/s-y th-e c-a-t. S-a-s/s-y

w-a-s b-l-a-ck a-n-d v-e/r-y f-a-t. H-e s-a-t a-n-d s-a-t o-n h-i-s

m-a-t. A b-l-a-ck r-a-t w-e-n-t b-y S-a-s/s-y th-e c-a-t. I-t w-e-n-t i-n a

h-a-t. S-a-s/s-y th-e c-a-t w-e-n-t t-o th-e h-a-t. H-e a-te th-e b-l-a-ck

r-a-t. H-i- s l-a-p g-o-t v-e/r-y f-a-t. H-i-s t-ai-l, w-e-n-t t-a-p, t-a-p, t-a-p.

I started 'reading' the passage by making the identified sounds before saying the words. ZN said he could read it. I let him. He was halting but read most of the words until he hit the word fat. I can't remember what he said; it was close to /fet/. I highlighted the -at and asked him if he could read that, and he read it correctly. "Just add the /f/ in front of it." He said, "frat." He couldn't delete the /r/. I taught him crossbody blending.

Using his right arm, he was to touch his left shoulder and say /f/. Then he touched his right shoulder, saying 'at.' Without my saying a word, he blended the sounds correctly. As he continued reading the passage, he used the crossbody blending technique without my having to say a word. He must have used it half a dozen times as he completed the passage. I have never had such a responsive student in my life. He is so eager to learn and so quick to get the point. Amazing! Given his word recognition problems, I have no idea how he even scored on a second-grade reading level. I am very optimistic he will be at a secure third-grade level by the end of the school year. In my heart of hearts, I'm hoping he will show a year's growth in a month. What fun!