Rose: My mum was my advocate, the school was quite receptive to what she did but she was somewhat known to roll (???) into the school, seeing that my sister and I had a problem. So yeah in regards to that she was known. I did my Special Consideration way back before these guys did. To start with, it was just for Dyslexia so I got a laptop and then for Autism I got a supervisor/clarifier, extra time and things of that nature. But I had to sit my exams separate to everyone else, I have to admit if I could see everyone else I would’ve felt better, but I was on a different level of the school to everyone else, and I found that, it made me feel a bit freaky in all honesty. I can understand it coz me clicking away on the computer would’ve distracted everyone but if I was just in another room with windows and could see everyone else, it would’ve made me feel better or so for my VCE exams.
For every hour, I had an extra half hour and the Economics exam when I sat was about 3 hours long so on the day I thought I was going to start at 3 PM but they wanted me to start at 1 PM, and I had an exam that morning, so I would finish with everyone else. He was warning us in the last exam that I couldn’t say “no I want to start with everyone else”, and it made me very very anxious when I did that exam because my timetable had changed. Please, don’t change someone’s timetable if they have an ASD, don’t do that, at all. This was back in the day we were using floppy disks, and the floppy disk couldn’t work properly, and we couldn’t find my VCE coordinator so my Dad came to pick me up at the end of the morning exam and luckily he had a USB stick when they were first introduced. Freaked me out, really put me off because a week later I had my history exam which was what I was hoping to do very very well in, and in the end I didn’t do well on my Economics exam at all because my timetable had been changed. I was a straight A student for Economics and I ended up only getting about a 33 (50 is maximum Subject Study Score) for the it because I didn’t answer the last few questions, coz if I had to have my timetable changed in the last moment, I would’ve needed a good hour to reset myself, readjust myself, rework what I was going to do. Coz I had my “answer this question by 2:30”, “answer this question by 3:30”, and then I had to recalculate the math in my head.
Teacher: Mmm. Can I ask question to the panel, when we were talking about time management and writing to time, how did you learn that and deal with it?
Andrew: I’ll get back to that sensory question later.
Rose: My mum got me an alarm, coz I prefer to use a face watch, not a digital one, and she got me an actual alarm that I could carry with me so it would make a vibrating sound coz I don’t like beeping electronics. It made vibrating sounds and I practiced during the school holidays to time myself and I worked out how long it took. In VCE, it took me about 45 minutes to do about 1000 good words. Good words is the key point there, so I could time myself on that. And because it was a computer, a laptop, I could go even faster and I learnt to teach myself there, I programmed the laptop to spring up with a reminder that I was meant to be moving on to the next question, that I should be timing myself for things like that. Don’t just get an alarm clock because some people with ASDs don’t like the sound of that, so ask them what sound they prefer to wake them up. Even nowadays, I can’t have my phone on ring, I have it permanently on vibrate.
Andrew: Same.
Rose: So something like that is quite good. During the Summer holidays, in particular for VCE you’re meant to give them VCE stuff to prepare them for, just generally speaking if you ask them to time themselves, for all of the kids in the class, it’ll really be good coz you can work out which kids are going to have time management issues. If you get them to do a couple of practice questions and exams and see how long it takes for them to do it, at 45 minutes, ask them to mark where they are, change pen colour, and you can work out how long someone’s taking. So from there, it basically helps everyone, even just normal people.
Andrew: Do you want to go next Ken, then I’ll go next to the sensory.
Ken: For the time management, um, I did English Language, so it wasn’t as bad as English but, basically there were 2 sections. The first section was, basically they ask the grammatical rules and stuff in sentences and the second part was where we had to write an essay. And like Grace, I allocated a specific amount of time to answer each bunch of questions. And I didn’t have an alarm clock, I just this watch that I used, and I always looked periodically, and I made my own rule, that whenever I answer a question, I quickly look at my watch to see how much time is remaining and when I should move on.
Andrew: Yeah, um I will admit I’m very, very, very bad at time management. One of the things I find difficult is knowing what to put in and what to leave out when I’m writing. Because it’s all very exciting to me, you know. And I’m a detail person, I like lots of detail -
Ken: In the exams, when they ask a question, in the bracket they tell you how many marks that thing is worth. So the more expensive the question, the more time I spend on it. So let’s say there was 120 marks, and the exam was 120 minutes long, I would say “Ok, if this question is worth 5 marks, I must finish it within 5 minutes or else.”
Andrew: Absolutely, and getting back to that detail point, last year I did a subject at Uni called “History of Music : Renaissance” which was fascinating, and I got given that essay topic. I think it was on techniques of Cantus Firmus Treatment in Renaissance Mass Settings, fantastic. It was very interesting! But the word limit was 2500 words, I won’t tell you what my final word count was, but if you times that figure by 4, you might get in the ballpark figure.
To be fair, there are books, there are thousand page books on sections of that topic, as I said to my lecturer at the time. But yeah, time management is a real issue, and for something like English, which is 3 hours, Year 12 English, um A: it’s a lot of writing for anybody, and B: it’s a long time to be in a room under pressure for exams getting worked up, getting anxious about things, and C: also English texts um, I have to mention this because this is a topic very close to my heart, analysis of English texts for ASD students in Year 11 and 12 -
Ken: I hated Year 9 and 10 English. We had to do Romeo & Juliet and Macbeth, and I didn’t understand the emotions -
Andrew: I skipped Romeo & Juliet!
Ken: Seriously, I did so bad in English coz I couldn’t understand what’s going through their heads about love. I don’t understand how people fall in love, and yeah they were asking about that, and I had no idea, and I just made my own theories, like I treated it as a scientific thing but it’s not, it’s very emotional.
Rose: I have a comic book of Romeo & Juliet, it’s a manga. It’s got probably 75% of the important dialogue, the manga version’s facial expressions (of the characters) are so much easier to understand.
Andrew: Just as a side point, if anyone here can give me a definition of what love is, I’d love to hear because I don’t know!
Ken: I had to read the dictionary to see what love is.
Andrew: But yes, in English it’s very very important because they’re chosen for Neurotypicals, the questions are phrased for Neurotypicals, some of the texts I did I still don’t understand. I had tutoring from one of the teacher aides to get me through English. I ended up getting a 50 (highest Subject Study Score) for English which I was quite happy about. But yeah it was very very difficult and knowing how much, how long to spend on those essays was hard. And obviously I had to spend more time on the essays that I found more difficult, the text analysis ones because it took me longer and more energy in my brain to process what was going on and how to write about it, how to write about the characters. I ended up just pouring out phrases that my teachers have told me. I didn’t understand how this character felt when he found he had cancer, you know, don’t ask me, I’ll just write what I was told.
Rose: The “Whose Reality” and “Context” component -
Andrew: Yes, ugh.
Rose: I was under the old one, which I had 4 essays in the exam, now that I’m actually teaching this Curriculum, I still don’t understand what they’re talking about.
Teacher: I’ve known Aspie students who in Year 12, for the “Context” component, often write out of context.
Rose: Mmm, particularly “Whose Reality” as well -
Andrew: Interestingly enough, I did “Encounter in Conflict” in Year 12, and at the time I was diagnosed with Clinical Depression, so that was quite apt for me. But yes for the sensory processing -
Teacher: We got about 5 minutes left.
Andrew: I’ll do a quick bit on the sensory processing. Sensory processing, you know, if you imagine, well it’s hard to imagine, but there are so many issues at school that people might not consider. You know, lights, fluorescent lights, brightness of lights, you know -
Ken: Bells ringing!
Andrew: Yes bells ringing, sounds, my hearing is hypersensitive, I could hear the vacuum cleaners going on 3 doors down the road. Unexpected sounds, classroom chatter, working while people are talking in class is so annoying! You know I just feel like saying to people “Be quiet!” you know. Um, crowds, outside, even coming here today there were students out for recess, I immediately, it was quite challenging for me.
Rose: You almost sprinted here!
Andrew: But yeah, sensory processing is a really big issue and also touch. Something I found because I was a Science student doing experiments, you know having chemicals and things around, and unusual things on my hands, handling a sheep’s heart, no, I mean no…
Ken: In Medicine we do anatomy dissections on cadavers, they’re dead bodies, yeah they preserve it in formaldehyde, it smells absolutely shocking.
Andrew: Absolutely. But the most important thing is, and I don’t think some people realize is that the trigger doesn’t have to be there, at the time, for consequences. You can just be here and something happened earlier in the day, and the student may have had a delayed reaction, or stew on things, play it over in their head, try to understand it, then it comes out later on, and it might be a totally different teacher, and they may be thinking “What’s going wrong here? I’ve got all the set ups, it’s done right…”. No, something happened earlier in the day and they need to be aware that that student needs time out because other things have happened that made them exhausted.
Rose: Also from a female perspective, once a female goes through puberty, there’s other certain commands, that time of the month (menstruation/period), sometimes schools don’t have adequate facilities for that, and it can be quite distressful. Suddenly we’re acting strangely and we need to go to the loo a lot, that’s the particular reason why. Um, also socks, my school had knee high socks. I do not like wearing knee high socks. It’s completely unexplainable why I don’t like wearing knee high socks, but the point is I don’t like wearing them. And also my school uniform was a woollen uniform.
Ken: Oh wool’s itchy!
Rose: Yeah so I always had to have my shirt tucked in under my skirt coz I didn’t like the skirt touching my skin. And my jacket, and when we had to wear the blazer in Summer, it was lined up to about 3 inches at the end, and that 3 inches would be rubbing against my wrists. It drove me absolutely insane, so I had to get a modified blazer where the lining just went over the cuff and over the neck. Then you look different and then you have that unfortunate conversation that you’ve got to have (people constantly asking why you have modified blazer).
Andrew: It’s painful though.
Rose: It’s painful! It’s like having a stone in your shoe.
Ken: And you can’t forget about it, it’s constantly there.
Andrew: Sounds can be painful, really high pitched sounds, particular voices.
1 comment:
Thanks for the link gtd, I'll have a look at it : )
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