He Did It!

It's that time of year: graduations.  But this time, it's ours - our boy ... young man, actually ... has graduated from high school.  In some ways, it seems like it went by so quickly, and in other ways, it has been so, so long.  The past month has been endless, and the work was supposed to have been finished at least five weeks ago.  Maybe that's why it has been sooo endless.

Of course, the unfinished work was in English.  Math has never been a problem for my boy.  Engineering has been his place to shine this year, confirming for him, and for us, the correctness of his decision to enter an engineering program in the fall. But English?  Oh dear.

His teacher has been unbelievable - working with him at every turn; modifying assignments; meeting with him; clarifying things if they weren't clear; re-modifying.  This last assignment wasn't even an essay, so I (foolishly, apparently) thought it wouldn't be a big deal.  Two weeks later, I was ready to pull all my hair out of my head.  My boy doesn't let anything disturb his "ultimate mellow."  And he'll sit endlessly in front of the computer and do ... nothing.  Sigh.

Finally, he got the initial piece done.  But he hadn't gotten some information that he wanted to use.  We had persuaded him that getting this in, while waiting for the information, was essential.  And that when/if he got the information, he could add the additional piece, and it should be just a little addendum.

Hah!

The new information came.  He sat in front of the computer for over a week, and did ... nothing.  I reminded him that the final grades had to be submitted.  He acknowledged the truth of what I said, and did ... nothing.  Finally, finally, finally, after about ten days, he made the changes.  Once he started actually working, it probably wasn't more than a couple of hours worth of work (I'm guessing here, because I don't know how involved PowerPoint is, at the level he uses it).

The payoff: the teacher LOVED it!  My boy is actually very skilled at this kind of technology.  He uses it in ways that the average high school student, even in this age of "all the kids do this stuff," does not.  I'm very happy, and very proud.

And my boy graduated from high school, surrounded by hundreds of his "peers," most of whom he has never met, and he doesn't know, and who don't know him.  He sat appropriately (for the most part) and listened to endless speeches, talking about how they all came into the school four years ago (when this was his first and only year at the school), and shared all these experiences (about which he had no knowledge), yet he was part of them.  He loved throwing his cap at the end, and remembered to save his tassel first.  He glowed.  

And his transcript will show that he graduated from our local high school, with a respectable GPA, passing all his courses (this was not always a given), and having taken rigorous college preparatory senior year classes.  He is justifiably proud of himself.  And next year, he is preparing to enter his next phase: studying engineering at a four year university!  Wow!

SAT's and Autism Awareness

Really, I had thought I would post during Autism Awareness Month.  Like many (most?) parents, I have some extremely ambivalent feelings about the entire "autism awareness" thing - we don't really need more awareness, we need more acceptance, more services, more ... blah, blah, blah.


I, on the other hand, have spent much of my "discretionary" time this month trying to deal with getting my son properly set up for next month's (May's) SAT test.  For years, I had been hearing about and dreading the process of obtaining accommodations.  The College Board is tough!  They aren't giving anyone accommodations.  Hyperbole?  Of course.  But still, it is a real concern and we were nervous.  My son has some serious writing issues.  When he has to write more than a few words by hand, well ... he doesn't.  He's had writing accommodations of using a keyboard since fourth grade!  We started working on getting him accommodations for the SAT's a year ago.  The happy shock was when he was approved for the requested use of a computer (for word processing) and extended time, with no appeals necessary!  Wow!  I figured we were home free!


I was an idiot.


First, there was the "simple" matter of signing my guy up for the SAT.  Despite the wording on the online form, that seemed to suggest that one needed only the prior date when the SAT had been taken, or the prior registration number, they wanted both.  Well, he took the SAT four years ago, when he was in 7th grade, as part of the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth program.  Oddly enough, I did not still have his admission ticket from then.  It took a mere 45 minutes worth of questions to ascertain that I wasn't making off with state secrets by establishing myself as my son's mother - who knows what the SAT scores of a 7th grader might reveal?  But that was the easy part.


The College Board is convinced that my son's tiny private school can administer the test.  His school is equally or more convinced that they cannot.  While speaking to the College Board's office of Services for Students with Disabilities, I found representative after representative (there have been numerous lengthy phone calls) who seemed to have no idea what an approved private school, a home school, a sending school, or a receiving school is.  They repeatedly assured me that if I simply contacted the named person from my boy's school, all would be fine.  What they could not comprehend was that the person they named had left the school 15-20 years before.


I tried to explain that the institutional memory of the school, which went back almost ten years, included no administration of the test, and the school could not and would not administer it, whereas my son's home school was perfectly capable of administering the test.  "What do you mean, that is his home school."  Um, no.  


Many, many hours of phone calls and emails later, I thought we had the situation resolved (after detours through apparent but inaccurate conflicts with finals), and we are back to a push-pull between which school is going to be responsible for administering the test.


And this is truly what the problem is with Autism Awareness.  People can be as aware as we want them to be about autism, but if our children/loved ones can't get the services/accommodations they need, are entitled to, have been granted - all the awareness in the world is basically useless.