Just a little (link) love: Stockdale Paradox edition
May 14, 2020
If you’d like to join me in helping Lakota families and/or rural libraries this year, please read this post. Over 6 weeks in 2019, we raised $2669.94 for the Lakota families, touching 27 lives. What can we do in 2020?
Current total: Lakota, $659.86; Rural libraries, $321.62.
Because JB hasn’t even started school yet and we’re both enormously lucky enough to be home but working full time, we have taken a similar approach to the notion of homeschooling. I know my friends in other states are worn OUT with homeschooling similar aged children and I just don’t see the value in spending your interminable days with your five year old trying to force them to do schoolwork when we’re all stressed out of our minds. We do have a little schooling happening with a professional, and the rest of the time is JB requesting worksheets, doing art, using their imagination, solving puzzles, learning fractions with food, learning to ride a bike, to be independent, and being creative. The fights are far fewer than when they were in school. Go figure. (Though we are not fight and tantrum free at all.)
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I doff my hat to Tami and her handiness. She built a bed for her dogs that’s pretty cool.
Stockdale Paradox
This REALLY resonates with me (whole thread here). I won’t even engage in “what’s the first thing you’re going to do when you get out” thinking because that’s (for me) too close to the “we’re getting out by….” speculation. I cannot do that and still get through this day to day to day stuff.
Can you talk a little more about the professional you have working with JB? How you found them, what they do with JB, how they do it? Forgive me if you’ve already done so and I’ve missed it– I’ve been running myself ragged with lockdown and haven’t been following blogs as much as I used to be able to. I think if I were to find a professional who can help a pre-K kid move forwards during lockdown, it would ease some of the pressure all around.
I hadn’t talked about it yet, I haven’t had time 🙂 so I’m happy to share a bit here. It was a bit of luck, a teacher friend works with kids around this age range we found out they happened to be free this period of time, so we asked if they’d be willing to take JB on as a student for a little bit a day. They do an online lesson up to 1.5 hours a day and during a week, they cover Language Arts, Math, Science and Social Studies. It’s pretty awesome. JB is very engaged with them, 1000% more than they were for much shorter sessions with their normal daycare teacher, and they look forward to their lessons every day. Their teacher really tailors the lessons to JB’s level and interests. It’s not a large portion of the day but it makes a huge difference in our sanity level.
I know they have previously worked on Wyzant so you might find qualified professionals there. I also know that a blog friend tutors kids around this age. Their site you might to check out in case they might be a fit for you: https://joyfultutoringinc.wixsite.com/tutoring
Oh, thank you! It hadn’t occurred to me that tutoring was an option for such a young kid, let alone that there was a site or blog people I could look at.
You’re welcome! I had only just started thinking about it before our friend became available so the timing was super fortuitous for us. Let me know if one of them might work out for you!
One of the things Mr. Sandwich and I settled on pretty quickly was that, given everything Baguette has lost with this shutdown (a blog post I have not yet written, and will not inflict on a comment), our first priority was giving her a sense of safety and security. Without that, she isn’t going to learn anything academic anyhow. I read to her every night at bedtime, and we occasionally do a math worksheet, but we are relying heavily on ABC Mouse–an app she loved long before COVID-19 was a part of our world. She chooses to play it, and I figure everything she does with it is exposure and absorption–even when she has me complete the exercise portions.
Just in the past week, we have started doing Zoom sessions with her behavioral aide. I have no real expectations for these sessions beyond getting her more comfortable with online interaction. She hates to see herself onscreen, even in a photo, so we have only tried one session with her actual class. I have the feeling we’ll need to use Zoom for ESY (Extended School Year), so if she can come to terms with it now, that will be easier. I hope. And if it isn’t, it isn’t. I’m not going to fret about it. That won’t help any of us.
I think that’s very realistic. I keep forgetting to try ABC Mouse, I’m positive that JB likes them because they are installed on the library’s computers.
How is she feeling now about those Zoom sessions?
Agreed on not fretting (much). I’m doing my best to just ignore niggling feelings of doubt.
My first marathon I was somewhere relatively near the finish but wasn’t sure if it was maybe a mile or less. A woman was standing on the corner and she was waving and yelling, “You are almost finished! You can see the finish from here!” and sure enough when I got to the corner and turned I could see balloons and signs at the end of the next block so I went into a sprint to finish as fast as I could. But when I got to the end of the block it wasn’t the finish, it was just another turn, and when I got to the next turn I still wasn’t at the end. I ended up having to run another half mile after I had sprinted full speed for about a quarter mile. I was so exhausted I thought I’d die when I finally finished. It was absolutely awful thinking each time I’d turn a corner I’d finally see the finish, and not seeing it. I guess that was my brush with the Stockdale Paradox and the evil woman on the corner.
That was unfortunate.