Hawklad was watching The Simpsons today in between some seriously heavy summer showers.
It was the episode where Milhouse gets to watch ALL of FINDING NEMO. Hawklad was not impressed….
‘DAD, I need a serious word with you…”
“Say that again….. NEMO had a mum…..”
“I can’t believe you did the same as Milhouse’s parents.”
YEP, Hawklad has only seen that famous fish movie once when he was really young and yes I did that Milhouse Parent thing. I started the DVD at chapter 2. He was blissfully unaware of the tragic parent carnage that happened in the first few minutes. Blissfully unaware until today….
I wonder how many parents did the same thing.
But here’s the thing, who was I really protecting. I suspect it was ME. I would have definitively blubbed….
A visit to Hawklad’s preferred college to see what it feels like during a normal, busy day. The key word is BUSY. Very, very busy. Overall the college has 8000 students. He found it often overwhelming and disorienting BUT HE STUCK IT OUT for a couple of hours. It also highlighted the things he needs to work on before he walks through the college doors for real.
He understands what college will feel like. Just how busy it will be. Busy and he won’t know any of the 8000 other students . His friends are all going to his former school’s sixth form, in a different town, 30 miles away. A sixth form that is not an option for Hawklad.
Hawklad also understands that the new college has strict exam entrant regulations for the courses he wants to do. He won’t find out how his exams went until the back end of August
He has to wait on exams and has just under 3 months to push on some things. But whatever happens this visit is another step forward.
Sunset on the Moors, on the longest day, just a short walk from a Neolithic historical site. That’s almost Druid talk around here. I was also wearing some rather fetching brightly coloured shorts with a hint of a seventies bell bottom about them, That surely would fit in perfectly with modern Stonehenge Solstice dress code.
As the sun set we listened to those well known Druid bands, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys.
Hawklad likes to come to the same spot on The Moors, a little parking bay on a deserted road. Miles from anywhere. Few humans. Just a couple of isolated farmhouses and a not so secret, secret military base.
Hawklad loves the feeling of isolation here and the familiarity of this little parking spot. The more times we come, the more we get to know the free roaming sheep, the birds, the butterflies. We seem to see the same characters. Almost timeless.
We are going to see a lot of this place. There are worse places to visit.
Almost out of the deep dark wood. Isn’t it sad that even after all these years I can still recite The Gruffalo, word for word. Where did those years go…
One moment I’m reading out The Gruffalo to toddler Hawklad, and in the blink of an eye I’m trying to explain magnetic fields inside solenoids to him. Wow, bring Julia Donaldson back please.
Thinking about it, I look like The Gruffalo now.
Hawklad has done so well, 18 exams down, 2 more to go tomorrow. Then he is out of the deep dark wood, pesky school finished. The poor kid is out on his feet, sadly I bet he isn’t the only Year 11 feeling that way tonight. How is this supposed to be a true reflection of potential, skills, talents, character and personal accomplishment. IT ISN’T, in reality it was never supposed to be. It’s about the system rather than individual child.
Every time that I go to our local waste dump, a sign on the gates makes me smile. I know what they mean but…
If you can’t dump waste at the Waste Dump, then what is the point of it 😂😂😂😂😂
So Hawklad hits the last week of final school exams. 6 in 5 days. Then as Alice Cooper puts it
SCHOOL’S OUT FOR SUMMER
SCHOOL’S OUT FOR EVER….
It’s kind of such an unnerving thought. After about 3-30 on Friday, that’s it for Secondary School. After the world changed, so often I thought just in terms of the period covering mainstream schooling. Plans kinda didn’t go past this School. Plans didn’t go past 3-30 on Friday. Everything seemed so far in the future. Where did that TIME go.
So I guess it’s planning time again. Try to give Hawklad the best summer possible. See where the exams results leave Hawklad and then help him get on the next path which he wants to follow. Currently he would love to do college, focus on History. That particular Plan is very dependent on his exam results.
I also need to think about his Muppet Dad as well. Where does Hawklad’s next path leave me… Is it more of the same or new doors. That definitely sounds like a TWO COFFEE problem to sort out. Just need to get Hawklad through this last school week….
One of those mighty motorways that cut through the North Yorkshire Moors. This is rush hour….
It’s rush hour with Hawklad’s exams now. Two weeks of mayhem, 12 exams in 10 days. It’s an official slog now. That’s how it’s designed to be. Zero marks for coursework, everything on final exams. Exams squeezed into just a few weeks
Hawklad has officially got to the ‘hit the wall’ stage. He has really tried, tried to catch up on being out of the classroom for over two years. Tried to catch up that time, with let’s say ‘patchy’ support from school, over just a few weeks. Too much cramming, trying to force in so much information. And now, with two weeks of exams to get through, he is zonked out, brain fudged. He is still trying to learn, revise, but it’s not going in anymore.
It feels like running a marathon. At the starting line you stand with high hopes, focusing on running a great time. You set off and it feels ok. Then at some point, it all changes. It starts to hurt. After that it’s just about survival. The mind and body have gone. Any thoughts of a decent time have gone, it’s now about just trying to get to the finish line in one piece.
So one particularly bad day for Hawklad when he was tired, nothing was going in. He felt like he was going backwards. STUFF IT. We went for a drive on the Moors. Exams are supposed to be everything, but life goes on. Exam Rush Hour will never give you views like that.
I must have walked past this tree at least a 1000 times and yet today was the first time that I truly noticed it…..
So it’s 8 exams down another 12 to go. So much for Hawklad to learn and revise over the next three weeks. Currently he is ‘enjoying’ a week long revision school holiday before the exams come flying back at him. Poor Hawklad is mentally shattered, these exams are taking so much out of him, he is drained. Trying to cram in almost 3 years work into just a few weeks, across a number of subjects. Trying to do this while trying to cope with the stress which the revision and exams are placing on his hard earned reading skills. Trying at the same time trying to learn to type exam answers up without any speech or grammar assistance.
It’s unbelievable to think that just under three years ago school had decided that he would never be able to read. The fact he is doing these exams unaided is already the biggest of big WINS for him.
But he is drained. Really drained.
So we through out the revision playbook. He needed a break. So he is having a couple of days off before he dives back into the work again. Two days off will hit the revision but it was the right decision. We all need to recharge sometimes.
Routine and familiarity is so important to Hawklad. Change is best approached with planning and preparation. Especially when he is under so much additional exam stress. As a result we have been trying to map out a course that has been as smooth as possible but sometimes all we can do is whisper “REALLY…..”
Been so many instances just over these first few exam days that have put obstacles in the smooth path.
After the first exam, Hawklad getting stuck in the classroom for an hour due to a faulty printer and national rules. Then having his invigilators changed at the last minute. Then being given teacher tips on banker questions that always come up and then they don’t this year. Or finding the day before the exam that he hadn’t been given part of the course. Or the cat and dog having a fight for the first time ever, a proper full on fight, just before another exam. Or other things…..
And then we got those extra days. A day mapped out to just focus on revising for his weakest subject for the upcoming exam. Minutes into starting work and this happens to the conservatory where he was sat.
Yes a shimmering sheet of supported roof glass shattered in seconds. I think that’s a bit of ‘s’ alliteration – I’m clearly learning as well. The end result….
Randomly one inner roof glass sheets turned into a glass rain.
I have never seen so much glass pieces. On the floor, on furniture, in revision papers, in Lego sets, in clothing. Everywhere. Thankfully the safety glass did its job and no injuries, well apart from my hands trying to sort out the mess. Spooked Hawklad, Spooked Muppet Dad, Spooked Pets. We could have REALLY done without that. So his favourite revision spot is not so favourite now.
It’s less than a week before Hawklad’s first exam starts. It’s starting to feel very real now. Very rushed. Very unnerving. Not feeling planned, feeling very out of control. Not controlling direction, much more being bounced and pushed around.
No exam revision breakthrough yet but he is trying. The problem is that this statutory process suits the system, certainly not Hawklad. He works best when he can focus on one topic and then go deep on that. Switching between topics disrupts his thinking, his learning, unsettles him. So randomly sitting 20 exams, across 6 subjects, over just a few weeks is so counterproductive to him. To him it feels like any progress made is then largely lost as he switches to a completely different topic.
The last few weeks he has also been trying to build rapport with a Teaching Assistant he has worked well with previously at school. If he needed to use a scribe in the exam then this seemed like a good option. The Student and Scribe need to develop that understanding and confidence for the best chance of success. With Asperger’s this is even more important. But now the Exam Board has ruled out using this Teaching Assistant in his exams. New regulations prevent scribes having a direct teaching link with the student. The Teaching Assistant has been providing some one to one English help as part of the weekly school sessions. Back to square one on this, any scribe would now be a stranger to Hawklad, he won’t have time to build up a rapport with a new potential person. A scribe is now not an option. So he is committed to reading and typing up his exams without help. With the grammar and spelling assistants turned off – he losses marks for using these.
The garden is still largely bereft of colour. Thankfully a couple of colourful characters are trying to buck the trend.
I was musing over a concert next year which happens to be nearby. Three old Rock Bands from my youth. Judas Priest, Saxon and Uriah Heep. One I managed to see a few decades back, the other two, it would be my first time. Maybe this time.
Following much friendly winding up from Hawklad, I worked out that the current combined age of those 3 bands was in excess of a 1000 years. Following on from his maths revision, Hawklad estimated that adding me into the mix takes the number closer to 2000 years. 2000 years ago the Romans hadn’t even got round to invading England yet. There’s a thought…
Another thought is that the first exam is less than 2 weeks away. Less than 2 weeks and some of the subjects are still teaching, still trying to get through the set curriculum. Hawklad ain’t getting through everything as it is, never mind adding to it. As Hawklad put it
Next week would be bad enough just trying to learn 25 love poems for English Literaturewhich might as well haven been written in Vulcan, but I’m also supposed to revise six other subjects and all this new stuff. Actually I could do with being a Vulcan like Spock.
Deep sigh.
Is it time to go to my prehistoric heavy metal concert yet…..
A Dad trying to cope with the loss of his Partner and becoming a single parent. 