Our son’s been increasingly interested in getting more education, for the very practical reason of earning more money…having the part-time job has taught him that he’s unlikely to ever make enough to live on from it, even if it were full-time.<\/p>\n
So we took him to the nearest city’s community college to find out what was available.\u00a0 Very sensibly, they insist on all incoming students (not just ones who have special ed and resource courses in their high school transcript) taking their assessment test.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I had been encouraging him to read and write something every day, and he had been, but what with my own work I hadn’t been teaching him.\u00a0\u00a0 We had hopes he would do well, at least on the math part of the test.<\/p>\n
He didn’t.<\/p>\n
He was quite upset with himself.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think part of it was the stress of the whole experience–he hasn’t ever had a test like that before, or a test in that environment before, and for someone on the spectrum this can produce a lot of cognitive shutdown.\u00a0\u00a0 I was delighted that he stayed the whole time (it’s several hours) and at least kept trying.<\/p>\n
When I looked at what the writing test was asking for, I realized that he’d never been asked to write that kind of essay before.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I started working with him a few hours a day,\u00a0 and he quickly caught on to the structure (it’s an essay with rules–this here, that there, this many paragraphs.\u00a0 Rules, he grasps easily.)<\/p>\n
He was given the results and an appointment with a counselor for this week, to which he went yesterday.\u00a0 The counselor is in the office for students with disabilities.<\/p>\n
It turns out that all he’s allowed to take are their lowest level of reading (developmental, they call it) and lowest level of math and a course designed to help students learn how to cope with college.\u00a0\u00a0 None of these produce real college credits, but they do offer the chance to learn in a college environment.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I thought he should start with just one course, but the counselor recommended all three.<\/p>\n
My husband (who had driven him down), took him to the bookstore and bought the books for these courses.\u00a0 Last night when they got home (our son had a few hours at his job), we looked at the books together.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I could tell that he already knows some of this (but didn’t show it on the tests, apparently) but that other parts he doesn’t.\u00a0 So these courses should provide a good transition.\u00a0 Getting him to and from the school will be difficult–it’s almost 50 miles away and will add to our driving time and gas costs.\u00a0 Tuition’s higher because we’re outside the right area.\u00a0\u00a0 But the nearest apartments that have some support for residents on the spectrum cost more than his entire disability benefit.\u00a0\u00a0 And that would be adding another new thing to cope with–more new people, more new responsibilities.<\/p>\n
Those are still discussion points, but he will definitely start in January.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We’ll never know how far he can go until progress stops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our son’s been increasingly interested in getting more education, for the very practical reason of earning more money…having the part-time job has taught him that he’s unlikely to ever make enough to live on from it, even if it were full-time. So we took him to the nearest city’s community college to find out what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,26],"tags":[40,42,22,29,41],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-parenting","tag-college","tag-downs-and-ups","tag-progress","tag-teaching","tag-testing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions\/95"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.speedofdark-thebook.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}