Maxim and YouTube

19 May 2011

I will tell you about a wonderful thing that has just happened in my household—actually TWO things. A couple hours ago, Maxim was having trouble with his homework. He had this disgustingly acidic attitude as he was grumpy. He didn’t know the stuff and I thought he wasn’t even thinking. He was trying to decide if two fractions are equivalent. He had a slouch, and he was filled with the one word answers of an uninterested bean bag. I said a couple times, “Well, if you don’t care, I don’t care, and I’m not going to help someone with your attitude. ”Then I would walk downstairs and read a book or something to Oskar who was always eager.

While I was down there, Maxim went back to reading his book—not concerned. When I went back up after a few minutes, his attitude had changed a bit, but he was still surly. I convinced him that he needed to act like he wanted help and to sit at his table with the book open and a pencil in his hand. After hitting a brick wall for the third or fiftieth time, I asked, “Your teacher didn’t teach this to you today?”

“No. ”

“What did she say?” (He has a terrific teacher who we worked with in Kazakhstan).

“She talked about decimals. ”

“She didn’t tell you how to make equivalent fractions?”

“No. ”

“Well, what did you learn about decimals?”

“That they have to have a point. ”

Don’t laugh because this is an important idea when you are just learning. “Okay…that’s right. ”

He continued, “And also that there are houses of tenths, hundredths, and thousandths. ”

“Yes,” I agreed, but I didn’t understand why he was learning about that because we in 5^th grade work on that stuff. I couldn’t understand why she would have talked about decimals and then gave him homework in fractions. I looked through his workbook and 10-12 pages further in the book and there was a lesson about tenths.

Maxim brightened up and said, “I can do that. ”The skills on this page were about writing fractions and decimals that involve tenths. He completed that page, including the somewhat more difficult story problem at the bottom in 5 minutes—without trouble, without tears and without beatings. I think somehow, he misunderstood which page he needed to do for homework. On top of that, we quickly when read two sheets of review work for tests that he will be taking tomorrow. In all, the evening was terrific!

Another wonderful thing that happened this evening involved my YouTube account. Recently, I was told by QSI that we should not be using our business account (qsi. org) for anything personal. So…I created a new account—oskmax@gmail.com--delinked my Facebook, and tried to login to YouTube. YouTube is now Google, is now everything, I think. Anyway…I couldn’t log in even though I had just cleaned it up about a month ago. I had deleted the two videos from yashamax1 and put everything on yashamax. Whatever—to make a long, somewhat complicated story (that you don’t need to understand) short, I got a message from YouTube after sending them a HELP! message. The message gave a link at which I could fix my problem, and I did. Yahoo!If you have never put up videos, or a blog, and then been faced with the possibility that you could not gain access to it, you don’t understand the relief that I felt when I was able to unlock the door to my control room. There are still more strawberries and ice cream in my dessert bowl.