December 15, 2020

Warning:  This is one of the boring posts, I write rather regularly to document what Robert is learning. However, I found out that during the process of writing I am also rethinking my approach to teaching.  I discover missing opportunities, and find more appropriate methods. I started writing this text hoping to prove that even our desk, academic studies do prepare Robert for a real world. I drifted and probably missed the point, I attempted to make. But I learned something else. So let it be. 

Facing the Real World while Sitting at the Desk

To be precise, it is not the desk, but the dining table. We are sitting there every day  doing our routine studies – math, reading comprehension, a little science, some geography, pronunciation and other language related exercises.  Meantime, the real world at large remains mostly inaccessible.

As soon as I wrote the above sentences, Robert, who was folding and hanging laundry, began to scream. I didn’t know why. Maybe something hurt.  But he couldn’t tell me what. So, as always , I brought his inhalers, in case his screams had something to do with sinuses or asthma. I gave him additional Metamucil cracker and a glass of water in case the problem were gases. I suspected that his noises might be related to a piece of garment he couldn’t locate since yesterday.  Unfortunately, we didn’t know what exactly was missing, although he clearly wrote: “Blue shirt Robert”.  Any way, he froze standing next to the pile of clean clothes and screamed. I deduced that my presence didn’t help either. I quickly made a list of topics to write about in this post and removed myself from Robert’s proximity. Not much later, he calmed down, put away all the clothes and came to the dining table to study.  Just like that,  

1. Real-World Math 1                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    I I bought it more than 8 years ago for Robert’s classroom. The teacher kept the original but made copies of the student’s worksheets and gave them to me. I placed them on a shelf among other copies and forgot about them. I probably thought that they were too difficult for Robert then. I don’t believe that anymore, although we take it slowly.                              Today, we worked on an assignment which asked Robert to choose food from the restaurant’s menu and 1. find the cost of all chosen items. 2. Find the amount of tax related to that cost. 3. Find the amount of 20% tip. 4. Find the total cost of the dishes, tax, and tip. Since every nine days (always every nine days) Robert want take-out, We will be doing the same thing on computer ordering that is. The counting we will still do on paper.
2. Comprehending Descriptive Language                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        This is another very old workbook. In the past, I read two words describing one of two pictures in the box and Robert was supposed to point to the correct one. Now, I give Robert the instructor’s page and Robert reads and circles the proper drawing on his own. Those are very easy tasks. I gave them to Robert mainly to increase his independence from me.
3. No Glamour Problem Solving Robert read a short text – one or two sentences and then circled one of three sentences which correctly stated why there was a problem. I am not sure how much Robert understood. I need to rethink the presentation of those tasks.
4. No Glamour Inferences we are still doing again (yes we did that before) first pages with easy problems. Today Robert was supposed to say, what was the missing part of the presented object.  To tell in a full sentence why the missing element was important part of the object, was much, much harder.
5. Saxon Math grade 5th. Today, Robert completed one page with relatively easy problems. Well,  with the exception of those tasks where either one addend in addition or minuend or subtrahend in subtraction were missing when those operations were written vertically (one number under the other).  Since Robert would know how to solve those problems if they were written horizontally, I have to assume it was my fault for not telling him to switch from one way of presenting problem to another. I think, I was as surprised as Robert was with those form of presenting operations. So instead of giving him simple way of translating something new into something he knows well, I lead him through torturous path of finding the answer.
6. No Glamour Language Elementary. We became familiar with this workbook years ago and completed easy (first) pages from different chapters . Now, we are dealing with slightly more challenging tasks. Today, Robert had to finish sentences of the form, “you should do this or that because….” by giving the appropriate reason. It was a difficult task for both Robert and me. I think, it would be much more beneficial, if I create sentences related closer to Robert’s experiences.
7. Skill Sharpener Geography 5,  I use the texts from this workbook mostly to practice reading comprehension. to every test, I write three to six questions. The workbook either doesn’t have questions or the questions seem to abstract.
8. Skill sharpener Science. Today two easy pages on magnets. Luckily, I had many magnets and even iron shavings to do additional experiments. well, we have done them before.  Nonetheless, words “attract” and “repel” still needed repetition.
9. Pronunciation. Never ending old big Weber book of words, phrases,  and sentences. I don’t even have a cover, so don’t remember its title. Anyway, that book has been replaced by few other, less intimidating. How long have we been practicing pronunciation with the help of that book? Well,  each page with either 60 words or 40 phrases lasts the whole week.  We completed at least 350 pages.  Thus we have been practicing pronunciation for 175 weeks. Three years and a half. Today we practiced “FR” in phrases and sentences.

Most surprising, however, is the fact that Robert seems to like it! Yes, there are moments when he seems frustrated, when he doesn’t understand and feels confused, but those are short moments. Very short. He does want to learn. Because of his willingness to learn, I need to learn to teach better.  I should use all the educational materials more flexibly as a suggestion, model and then create something more attuned to Robert’s  abilities and his needs. 

December 14, 2020

Why do all the candy wrappers have to be thrown into the waste basket in the basement bathroom?  No other waste basket will do. Not the one in the bathroom upstairs, not the one in the kitchen, not the one in Robert’s bedroom. No matter what sort of candies the wrapper came from, it still has to go to that one and only waste basket. If anyone places a shiny wrapper in any other place, Robert will retrieve it and carry to the bathroom downstairs.

Why does the floss pick have to be disposed of by dropping it into the waste basket in the main bathroom? Not any other container. Not even if that requires patiently waiting outside the bathroom until Robert’s cousin finishes his shower – sometimes more than 30 minutes.

Why do Robert’s lunches always come in the same sequence:  poblano, eggplant, chicken fingers, hamburgers, poblano, eggplant, chicken fingers, hamburgers, take out form Outback or Applebees’ and then again poblano, eggplant…. I am glad that Robert asks for the take-out after running his four dishes twice but I don’t know why he makes this arrangement either. Does he believe that the take-outs are something special and thus are both: the part of the routine and the break in the routine?

Why does Robert get agitated when I enter my daughter’s room or my husband’s office to talk with either of them for a few minutes. From another end of the house, Robert calls, “Out, out, out”.  He wants us to be assigned to our specific places when we are not in the living room, dinning room, or kitchen. At the same time, he allows himself to enter and stay in every room in the house.

Why does Robert eat each of the four stuffed poblano peppers on a different plate? Moreover, there are always the same four plates (with different patterns).  Only when one plate is broken, Robert would choose another specific plate to replace it then and in the future.  This is the custom he created only for the sake of poblano peppers. He can put on the same plate many slices of an eggplant with cheese and tomato sauce. That sometimes makes the plate look very unappealing, but Robert doesn’t care.

A few times on this blog, I wrote about Robert’s vision of the universe which consists of either separate bubbles, or strings with the same sort of knots on them.   Those strings do not cross each other. For those purposefully disjointed worlds Robert establishes rules that he knows well but we desperately want to understand.

In two previously written posts: Fighting Entropy, https://krymarh.wordpress.com/2019/10/25/fighting-entropy/ and Rejecting Entropy https://krymarh.wordpress.com/2017/02/06/rejecting-entropy/ I connected Robert’s behaviors to his resistance against Entropy. I also wrote how often we tried to make Robert more flexible by having him to accept new situations or new solutions to repeated events. We want Robert to create a more general, unified vision of the universe with more chaos but also more freedom.

December 7, 2020

I searched this blog for the first post about Robert learning to solve Sudoku. I found out that two and a half years ago, in July of 2018, I posted this: https://krymarh.wordpress.com/2018/07/18/on-sudoku-and-screams/ .  Since then, I wrote dozen of posts in which I mentioned Sudoku as a part of the daily routine. I know that at least in a couple of posts, I wrote  paragraphs about teaching Robert to write a specific number under a column or to the side of the row to which this number belonged when the exact cell couldn’t be yet identified. Sadly, given how chaotic this blog is organized, I couldn’t locate these posts without reading all of them. Nonetheless, it was illuminating to recall Robert’s first encounters with Sudoku.  His first struggles to understand the concepts behind the puzzle.

1. In the morning of one, sunny, September day, I prepared a few pages for Robert to complete them later with my assistance. I left them on the table and went outside to sweep the deck and water the plants. Fifteen or twenty minutes later, I heard Robert calling, “Mom, mom.” I rushed inside, to see him sitting by a Sudoku which was already more than half filled. Robert called me because he realized that he made a mistake and needed help.  That was a moment to remember because:

a) He started Sudoku all by himself.

b) He filled most of the cells correctly.

c) He realized that he made a mistake and stopped.

d) He asked for help. !!!!!!!

2.  Three days ago, Robert began solving Sudoku while I was busy in the kitchen and he completed it while I was still busy.  Then he showed it to me.

a) He solved the whole Sudoku.

b) He shared his success with me.

3. Yesterday, I asked Robert’s sister, Amanda, to practice pronunciation of words with both voiceless and voiced “TH” sounds. I asked because I still don’t say those sounds correctly. Moreover,  my throat hurt. As Amanda went down the list of words and Robert kept quietly repeating them, he also reached for the page with Sudoku and began solving it. At some point, he stopped, tapped one Sudoku cell with his pencil, and looked at Amanda expectantly. She understood, looked at the puzzle and suggested the next number to look for. Robert did and soon Sudoku was solved.

a) Robert accepted Amanda (someone beside me) to model his pronunciation.

b) He was able to repeat the words almost as if that was the natural conversation while simultaneously, he did something else.

c) He asked for and accepted Amanda’s help.

Of course, of course, there is a lot more for Robert to learn. He could /should learn to fix his errors even if that meant to start from the beginning. He could/should learn to more often utilize writing number below or next to a column or a row, if the proper cell is not completely specified. Yes, yes, yes, of course there is always more to learn and do. But today is the day to brag about Robert’s achievements.  So let’s brag.