I had Brandon for two sessions today as I substituted one class for Liz. Michael had not done the reading for today, so we just picked up where we left off in class. Reading is a very serious obstacle for him. He has a lot of trouble with vocabulary and actually understanding what he reads. An example of this is from an essay we read by Warren Christopher in which he compared two cars passing in the night, to the way people interact with each other in the world. In essence, he says that we all rely on each other to not cross into our lane and kill us. But when I asked Michael, what he meant when he said he caught the others drivers eye, Michael's response was that he was wondering if the other driver was the same age. He completely missed the point of the essay. Once the material is explained to him, he gets it pretty quickly and can engage in conversation about it. But more and more I'm realizing that he needs the material explained to him or he just doesn't get it. I understand now that the reason he's not taking good notes is that he simply doesn't understand the material.