Tai Kwando: Physical Education and Something More

Last year, when we started homeschooling, N. talked about wanting to start a sport.

He said he was considering football, but I nixed that. Football involves too many injuries to young bodies and especially to brains. People with neurological diagnoses are more vulnerable to mild traumatic brain injury and N. is in that category. Also, N. is exquisitely sensitive to being hurt by others on purpose, and that is what football is about.

I suggested that he consider either a track club or martial arts. Both of these are individual sports in which a person is competing only with his or her personal best. These kinds of sports are very good for people with Aspergers. After mulling it over for a while, N. said he wanted to do martial arts. But by then we were deep into Bar Mitzvah preparations, and I knew I could not take on one more thing! So I told him that we would investigate martial arts after the big day.

But we took a good long break in January. In February, N. started his museum science class and we were working with Dr. Sheri Florance on Brain Engineering. That was worthwhile, but definitely not inexpensive. In March, we discovered the Wilderness Awareness School and Kemana. April was Passover, and in May we got busy with summer plans...

Are you dectecting a pattern here?

In June, we started the flooring project and N. went to Boy Scout camp. In July, he was in Illinois for three weeks. If this was August, this must have been Coyote Tracks camp in California...September was the High Holy Days.

Wow! Time sure does fly when you're having fun!

Finally, last Monday, after some urging from N., I made the call to Blackman's Tai Kwando Academy. Master Blackman has taught martial arts to a number of the kids that learned Hebrew from me. Two of those kids are Black Belts now, and one is training for the Olympics. That kid--well, he's not really a kid anymore--time does fly!--is doing a class for kids with ASD at the JCC. We thought about that program, but N. wanted to pursue the sport without reference to his disability. So a week ago Monday, I called up Blackman's.

They certainly don't waste any time. That afternoon I took N. for a free trial lesson.

When it was over, the teacher said that N. seemed to do well, listening to each direction and working at the moves. N. said he wanted to sign up.

So N. is now a member of the school, complete with a uniform and practice DVD to get to the yellow belt. He can take lessons on Monday just before boy scouts and on Wednesday just before Machon (Religious Ed). I also take him in special on Thursdays. That is three hours a week of intensive training. Since he is 13, he takes his lessons with the beginning adults. Those groups are small and he gets a lot of individual attention.

The sign-up form had a list of goals for the student to choose and check-off. N. checked "self-defense," as well as "discipline" and "confidence." Those are interesting goals. When he was in school, N. had several bouts of problems with bullies. So self-defense seems like a natural goal for him in his martial arts training. I would have chosen "discipline" for him, as that is always important for teens. But I had not thought much about "confidence" lately.

Accomplishing the rigorous goals of the Bar Mitzvah was a step that made N.'s confidence bloom. So, too, was the experience with Kamana I and the Coyote Tracks camp. I had not really thought about it much, but N. has blossomed in the past year, with homeschooling, and these other accomplishments.

However, N. had a nasty bout with bullying in his scout troop just before we went to Coyote Tracks. It was antisemitic bullying from the other three members of his patrol. The actual things the kids said to N. indicated their complete ignorance of Judaism and of the Holocaust, but they were hurtful remarks none the less. We called the scoutmaster that very same night, and to his credit, an immediate stop was put to the behavior, N. moved out of that patrol and into another, and the troop board is planning a Holocaust educational trip to the local Holocaust museum. But it has taken N. a long time to bounce back. He missed getting his Second Class with the other boys because he was apathetic about one last requirement. He missed the court of honor anyway, because it was scheduled for the night of Yom Kippur. (That's another issue we are working with the troop on--this was the second year in a row the family camp-out was scheduled during the highest of the holy days). But he has seemed to regain some interest in the scouts again.

Still, in reflecting on his year, I realized that for someone with AS, targeting by bullies can become a way of life. And the best way to deal with bullies is confidence.

Today, N. completed a six hour training on self-defense using Combat Hapkido methods. These include anatomical targeting and using the force of the attacker against him. He will need to go to another day of this training before he gets his higher ranks in Tai Kwando. He said that they taught a lot about observing the environment and moving with confidence, because the best way to solve problems with bullies and other attackers begins with confidence.

Confidence. It is an important aspect of physical training that was never explicitly taught in the public schools PE classes. There, bully-proofing was limited to telling an adult--many of whom had never been taught how to actually stop bullying behaviors.

Confidence is not on the curriculum in schools. It would be extremely difficult to develop confidence during physical training in schools and, at the same time, take it away by the extreme sport that testing has become in the very same schools.

Confidence. Evidently, as he has developed some of it, N. has also developed the desire for more!

Fog, Rocks, Waves and Sand...

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

What would you do with a high-energy kid
before hopping into Henry the Big Red Truck for a 12 hour drive? On August 18, 2007 we did this:

We took him out for a nice breakfast.

And then we went to the beach in Pacifica, California.

The rocks were just calling out to be walked on.








And jumped across.















And keeping your balance takes agility, strength and concentration.

The fog and cool Pacific breeze made the air feel soft and wonderul.

In a few hours we would be in the desert.
But first, N. got to spend an hour being a kid on the beach.
By the end of that hour he was quiet and focused.



Nature's Prozac!

Carnival of Homeschooling: The ABC's of Homeschool

The 95th Carnival of Homeschooling: The ABC Edition is up, over at At Home With Kris. I didn't count the number of articles, but I know that there are more than 26!

The image of the alphabet comes from the Art of Graffiti. It reminds me of Micrography, an art form in which images are made completely of words.

Math: Taming the Speed Demon

Last year a You-Tube video done by a west-coast weather forcaster made the rounds of the homeschooling virtual world.

The weather forcaster started with the complaint that when she went back to school to study meteorology, she noticed that the math skills of her young colleagues was lacking and that this limited their ability to be successful in their studies. Thus far her argument holds up. It would be difficult to be successful in any scientific field if math skills are lacking.

But then the argument took an interesting turn. She said she went home and took a look at the methodologies that were being used to teach her children math. And she zeroed in (no pun intended) on three different methods used for multiplication. All three methods worked. That is a student could use any of the methods to calculate a correct answer. The argument came down to speed. She concluded that the problem her fellow students at the university level had with math was that they had been taught inefficient methodologies for problem solving, and so getting to the correct answer was taking more time. Another You-Tube video was made by a man who calculated exactly how much more time the alternative methodologies took and there was a difference of at least several seconds. The man did not calculate whether that difference was significant or not.

As I watched this You-Tube and the minor sensation it made in the homeschooling virtual world, I had a nagging sense that there was a real problem with the framing of the argument but I did not take the time to follow it through. Instead, I had flashbacks to third grade math with Mrs. C. With all the best intentions, Mrs. C. gave timed tests of multiplication and division. These were not timed tests of knowing the multiplication tables only. Instead, the people who did multi-step problems the fastest were considered math whizzes who would go on to be scientists and techno-geeks. Alas, I was not to be one of them. I was one of those kids who had poor motor skills and held my pencil too hard--which I still do when I am nervous--and so I never had the "whiz-kid" speed. And so I developed the idea that whereas I was good at reading, science, and history, I was no good at math. I continued to think so all the way through Algebra, Geometry and Algebra II and Trigonometry , Math Analysis and Pre-Calculus in high school.

I thought that I was no good in math, even though I got A's in my classes. I thought that I was no good in math even though I understood numbers and got very excited by ideas like negative numbers and scientific notation. I thought that I was no good in math right up to the point where I too the PSAT. Then I realized that there was something wrong with my assessment of my math ability. And when I found that I enjoyed calculus and what it could do for me in physics and chemistry and biology, I concluded that there was probably nothing wrong with my math abilities. (Yes--I am a Geek, first class. I also really enjoy statistics).

I don't know how many people in Mrs. C.'s third grade math class became scientists. I do know that I did. And I now understand that when it comes to math, accuracy is far more important than speed. I don't know about you, but when I cross a highway bridge, my confidence in the engineering is based on a sense that the engineer can make accurate calculations. I really don't care if he did the problem seven seconds faster than someone else. Seven seconds is not really a very long time compared to the years that would be taken off my life if the bridge collapsed with me on it.

These are the thoughts that guide me as I go about re-teaching math to my son, N.

N. had a much more traumatic experience with math in third grade than I did. His fine-motor skills and hand-eye coordination were so compromised that he used to have great difficulty even lining up words or numbers corrrectly on a page. And mental math requires strong auditory working memory, another issue for N., who has Central Auditory Processing Disorder--a specific learning disability--on top of his AS diagnosis. You can imagine what happened when his teacher gave him timed math problems. We were told that N. did not know his math facts and that he was "slowing the class down." The third grade teacher added insult to injury by labeling N. publically as "lazy." It does not take a rocket scientist to conclude that N. was not motivated to actually learn math.

When I undertook to teach him math last year, I found that there were big holes in his understanding of basic operations. It was clear that he had missed important steps and concepts in his elementary school math training. This probably springs from two sources. One is that he had so much difficulty following verbal instructions that he simply missed much of what was being "taught." (My very wise professor in Special Education Assessment says that if a student hasn't learned something, the first hypothesis ought to be that he was not taught it. Covering material for a student is not the same thing as teaching that student). The second problem with math instruction in public schools is that, in their frantic urgency to improve standardized test scores, districts tend to change curricular programs very often. Program changes in the middle of someone's education tend to create gaps in learning because each program builds on previous instruction in different ways.

The other problem we face in order to re-teach math to N., is the issue of motivation. When N. sits down to do math, his anxiety climbs quickly to the red zone. He has learned that he is "no good at math." A large part of that problem has to do with speed. He has been inadvertently taught that if he cannot come up with the right answer in 15 seconds, then he is hopelessly stupid and there is no point in continuing.

Aside: In my opinion, this problem extends far beyond N. and far beyond math. I believe that one reason our schools are failing is that we have taught our kids that filling in the blank or the bubble for the "right" answer in all areas is far more important than actually thinking something through.

But enough! Back to the main story.

We have developed the following principles for re-teaching N. math.

1. Teach basic math from the beginning.

When N. expressed the desire to learn algebra, I took him out for coffee and we had a conversation about math instruction. I explained to him what I had observed about how poorly math is taught in elementary school in general, and what was lacking in his math instruction in particular. I listened while he told me about the feelings of fear and anxiety he has whenever he sits down to a math problem. Then I told him that it was my hypothesis that if he started math from the beginning operations and systematically studied them, we could certainly be doing algebra by next year.

We made an agreement about how we would help N. reach his goal. So that N. could learn from the beginning of the operations, we ordered Basic Math from the Teaching Company's Great Courses. We also agreed that we would not be concerned about time. N. would proceed through the material systematically, taking all of the time he needs to learn each operation and concept well. And we agreed that would work on auditory working memory outside of math i.e. there would be no verbal drills. And this all leads to:

2) Speed is not important, accuracy is.

Our goal at present is that N. should use a variety of methods in order to learn algorithms and to understand the number theory underlying them. Just as we are not worried about how long it takes for N. to learn the math, so we are also not concerned about how long it takes to do a problem set.

We have taught N. a new mantra: "This is why pencils have erasers." Since accuracy is more important than speed to us at this point, it would be easy to fall into the trap of thinking that errors are fatal. But at this point, we are far from designing bridges and airplanes, the important point here is that N. learn to check his answers and learn to find and correct his mistakes. To do that, N. must understand the concepts that underlie the algorithms he is learning. When he comes to apply math to things like bridge design, it will be very important that he can check his answers for himself and be able to know that they are accurate.

I know, I know! What about standardized testing? That is the big question that the Math Speed Demons out there will definitely be asking. Isn't speed important to those?

Answer: Yes, in a way. Actually, what those tests require is familiarity with the basic operations to the point of automaticity. That means that the student is able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide without needing to develop the algorithm each time. This allows the real problem-solving power to be applied to more complex math using algebra and calculus. And here is the take-home message to this idea:

When a student is learning to understand math operations and develop algorithms, he will be slower at working problems. As the algorithms become automatic, the speed will increase.

Think about it. When you take it upon yourself to learn a complex skill, it goes slowly at first. As your brain builds the needed neural connections, your speed and accuracy improve. Eventually, you have made certain skills automatic and now they can be applied to more complex problems. For example, when I first started to embroider, I did not know any of the stitches. So my first project took what seemed like forever, as I learned the basic stitches needed on each part of the project. The more projects I did, the faster I completed them, until I was able to do large and ambitiously complex projects with enough speed to actually enjoy them.

By going back to fill in the gaps for both knowledge and skills without concern about speed, we hope that N. will "automate" the basic math operations. As his skill and accuracy improves, so will his timing.

But the ultimate goal is not to be fast! It is to appreciate numbers and enjoy applying math to real-world problems in order to get good results and satisfying answers to the big questions.

Winter is Coming!

Saturday as I was walking the dogs, I saw a Southern Rocky Mountain Junco sitting in the pine near the swingset. It was singing, "Winter is coming! Winter is coming!" These birds come down from Colorado at the beginning of the winter season. That evening, when I took the dogs for their pre-bedtime walk, there was a ring around the waxing moon. It was 55 degrees and warm. "What winter?" I wondered.

But this morning as the sun rose, altocumulous clouds blew rapidly across the sky. Definitely the sign of an upper level disturbance and weather coming in. It was 36 degrees just before dawn, but by 9 AM it was only 31. Today the temperature never rose above 36.

This afternoon, as MLC and drove over the mountain to Sandia Mountain Ranch to look at a house on the Parade of Homes, we noticed low cumulonimbus clouds sweeping across the plains of Estancia. "Looks like snow," we both said together. And it was. A few hours later, back home, I caught the picture above as the snow fell around the swing set.

It had been snowing rapidly as we looked through a house over on Sedillo Hill. As we drove home, we saw the deer heading for the woods.

And then one, two, and many white flakes came out from the clouds, feathering down past the still bright leaves on the scrub oak above the driveway.

I stepped out the french doors to the back patio to catch this picture on my camera. Here I used the sports photography setting to catch moving objects. The timing makes the snowflakes look like white threads falling past the clearstory window.

The Aspen tree, so gold last week and now faded to brown, is reflected in the glass.

A few more good days of wind and those leaves will be gone!

Funny thing, but the last time we had snow showers was in early May, at Lag b'Omer, when MLC ran the 5K Run for the Zoo race. She ran in a sweatshirt in May, on a blustery morning with clouds racing across the sky. We saw the last snow showers of the season that afternoon

Today she ran the Duke City Marathon on a blustery morning. And lo, and behold! The first snow showers of the season.

This evening, it snowed some more while we ate dinner. And when I took the dogs out for their last walk it was 31 degrees. A dusting of snow covered our metal roof, the car tops and the grill. There was a ring around the moon and to the west I saw more snow clouds making their way up the valley.

Winter is coming!

Incidental Education While Doing Floors

Overheard while my guys were working on the floor.



N: Who invented physics, anyway?



Bruce: Well, it really goes all the way back to the Greeks you studied last year. But other people like the Egyptians and the Chinese and tribes we don't even know about use physics whenever they build something. They understand the practical results even if they didn't invent the calculations.



N: Would there by life in the universe if there was no physics?



Bruce: No. Well, what I mean is that our universe in governed by physical laws, and those laws are at the basis of life. The chemical interactions that make DNA work, those are all physical at the core...



N: What about inside black holes? The laws of physics don't work there, do they?



Bruce: Not like we understand them. We really don't know what happens inside a black hole, but time, for example, slows down when you watch something get closer to the even horizon on the black hole it slows down until it appears frozen there. So time is different in a black hole....

N: Is the black hole at the center of our galaxy caused by...I mean is it gravity...?

And a discussion of mass and acceleration and space-time ensued, ending with the following--

Bruce: Mass tells space how to bend and space tells mass how to move.



N: Wow! Just a minute, I have to get the glue even here...



Bruce: Did you know that this one row has probably $5.00 to $7.00 worth of glue?



N: Really? Wow, and it's not even very much Bostik...Does anybody actually burn money?



Bruce: Well, the treasury does when it has to get rid of worn out money...



And they went on to talk about the paper cloth content for money, what will happen if we just print more money, and why counterfeiting is a problem, and from there, why it is wrong to take or accept bribes.



N: Do you really think you could bribe a cop with donuts?

Bruce: Well, you shouldn't.

N: Remember the 'Fly-By Donut Caper'?



Note to readers: DON"T ASK!



Oh, well, if you insist.

Monday October 8, 2001ALBUQUERQUE (Reuters) - An Albuquerque policeman and his pilot face disciplinary measures after using a police helicopter this week to swoop in for a midnight snack of doughnuts, officials said on Friday. The officer and the civilian pilot were on night patrol over the city in a Kiowa OH-58 helicopter when they landed in a vacant lot next to a Krispy Kreme doughnut store around 1 a.m. on Thursday morning.``The contracted pilot and a police officer landed the copter early in the morning, ran in and grabbed a dozen, came back out and took off,'' Albuquerque Police Department spokesman Brian McCutcheon said.... An eyewitness told the Albuquerque Journal that he saw the APD helicopter circle the Krispy Kreme and land in a nearby dirt field.... A Krispy Kreme employee who asked not to be identified said he didn't see why people were making a big deal of the unusual doughnut run.``Cops got to eat, too,'' he said.



From the sublime to the ridiculous!



Homeschool is always in session.

Even on Sundays.


Even if there are no more Krispy Kreme Donuts in Albuquerque.

Ask A Stupid Question...

I just e-mailed the take-home portion of my Psychological Assessment midterm to the professor, and now I have completed midterms.



I had a test on the construct and measurement of intelligence yesterday in that class.

I also had a presentation on the reliability of motoneurons in the pontine nuclei for Neuroanatomy and Physiology. I did quite well on the presentation and actually managed to generate some discussion. It was an interesting paper and I enjoyed it.


I don't know how I did in the Psychological Assessment exam.


I find that I am having trouble changing the "set" (as they call it in psychology) from Neuroscience to Psychology as I run from one to the other. The neuroscience classes tend to have a very tightly focused research orientation and the psychology class seems to be looser and more clinically based. Also the culture of the departments is different, especially with respect to the interactions between students and professors.



It gets really difficult for me to change my set when the subjects interact, as they did on Tuesday, when in Psychology, the professor did a presentation on basic brain anatomy. At one point he was discussing the Pons and he said that injuries to the Pons tends to cause widespread neurological problems due to the importance of the Reticular Formation to the function of the higher centers.



I was excited by his comments. At last! Something that I could relate to my other class. I was, after all, in the middle of developing my PowerPoint for the Hu paper on the Pons. My focus, alas, was on that research, so I asked the following:
"Do clinicians look for visual-motor signs that could indicate Pontine Reticular Formation damage? Like problems with saccades?"

The professor paused for a moment and gave me a funny look.
Then he said: "Well, generally people with massive damage to the Pons are either dying or dead."



The class giggled. I felt like a total idiot. I was thinking of the research level, in which induced lesions in the deep nuclei of the Pons are shown to have specific effects on saccades--which are a quick movements of both eyes in the same direction in order to direct focus at a new stimulus. But the good professor was talking about clinical situations in which a person suffered massive head trauma. And anyway, he was introducing general brain anatomy to the class. He wasn't interested in tightly focused details. We were talking on completely different wavelengths.



I didn't get the social cues. At times like these, I am sure that the apple does not fall far from the tree. N. has Aspergers, an Autism Spectrum Disorder. I can see that I do display the Broader Autistic Phenotype, as Tony Attwood calls it. This is probably why I do better in neuroscience than in psychology.



And you know what they say:

'Ask a stupid question and you get a stupid answer.'

That's exactly what happened.



Naturally, my curiousity led me to take a look at Kandel--our neuroscience text.

It turns out that there are two problems that can arise from lesions in the Pontine Reticular Formation that can lead to visual motor problems.

One is nystagmus--the inability of the eye to fix on a stimulus after saccading to it. This means unwanted, repetitive saccades because although commands are coming from the frontal lobes to pay attention to certain sights and sounds and not others, the visual-motor neurons are compromised and cannot carry them out.

The other is seen in patients with MS. It is called internuclear ophthalmoplegia, and is caused by dysfunction of the motor commands to the medial rectus muscle--the one on the side of the eye nearest to the nose--but only when it moves laterally in saccades.



You see, I asked a stupid question. That is, wrong focus, wrong time, wrong place.
And I got a stupid answer. That is, one not directed to the level at which I was asking the question.



I did learn from it.



But I am especially mortified because as we talked about intelligence tests and the concept of intelligence, this professor specifically stated that understanding social situations--that is issue like "set"-- are an important component of intelligence.



I guess that makes the somewhat socially inept, technical geniuses in my family...stupid.



What we need to do is make a new movie in which introverted neuroscience grad students take over the psychology department by virtue of their higher performance IQs.

We could call it Revenge of the Geeks!