My daughter was initially apprehensive about being entered into the challenge. It’s a test for one and a competitive test at that. Her retired braillest told her the first year you go, it’s just for fun and that it doesn’t matter what you do on the braille side of things. Mrs. Aagaard has a way of saying things in such a way that it makes my daughter relaxed and interested in things. After their talk, she was interested in going.
When we arrived this morning I quickly realized my daughter was the youngest participant there as a first grader. I would guess the next youngest students were in third grade and most were older still in middle school or high school. Here’s a picture of all the participants:
My daughter is in the pink sweat pants in the front row.
After opening ceremonies and pictures the participants went off to their testing rooms and the adults went to a meeting room where we had speakers through the morning’s testing time. After about twenty minutes one of the proctors in my daughter’s room came and found me, saying my daughter was having a hard time.
I went in to find her in tears and looking like she felt she’d failed everything. I knelt down and she told me, “there are so many contractions. I don’t know what it says.” I went to the proctor and asked her what she’d given my daughter because she was signed up for uncontracted braille. The proctor, who was super nice, had been asked to volunteer by her husband last minute and didn’t even know what the words, “contracted” and “uncontracted” meant and knew zero about braille.
My daughter had been given something impossible for her to do. It’s like being given a calculus test when you’re only in second semester algebra. The other proctor didn’t realize what had happened and when she did they found the correct reading comprehension packet in uncontracted braille (which has all words completely spelled out without any shortcut braille symbols). We got it to my daughter and she started reading and I could tell she was trying to go quickly.
About that time they announced there were twelve minutes left for that section. My daughter quietly wailed, “oh no, I’ll never finish in time.” I could hear the despair in her voice. I went up to the proctors and asked if she could be given adequate time to complete the section since she had only now gotten the proper test assignment. They agreed she could have time and apologized again for the mistake.
I went back and told my daughter that this year was for fun, not to compete and that she wasn’t being scored against anyone anyways and to not worry about it, to do what she felt like doing. She was busy reading at that point so I left the room quietly.
I came back a while later to find the room empty with everyone taking a break—except for my daughter, who was solemnly typing answers on her braille writer. I didn’t return for the rest of the testing period because they had found the other two test sections in uncontracted format and would be sure to get my daughter the versions of the tests she was suppose to have.
We all met in the large meeting room for lunch after the tests were over and I came upstairs where I saw my daughter happily sitting with a group of students, eating her lunch. She wasn’t clingy when I came to say hello, she told me she had made some new friends.
The rest of the day went very well, with my daughter enjoying the drum circle the entire time and being excited she won a raffle prize. As we drove home I told her I had had a good time today. She said, “I didn’t have a good time.” I said, “you didn’t?” She replied, “I had a great time.”
The Big Boy Update: My son had another good day at school with the Adderall. My mother picked him up and got him an adult’s meal at Chick-Fil-A, which he completely ate. He was much more regulated when he got home, unlike yesterday, which was exceptionally challenging for both him and me. He also had eaten his large lunch. It looks like he might not be affected by the lack of appetite some children have when taking Adderall.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: When I think about what my daughter did today: going into a room with no one she knew, taking a standardized test that was also a competition and being given the wrong version—which she couldn’t read—I’m very proud of her. She was upset, but she handled it and recovered well. She told me later she thought she did very well on the spelling part because she’s very good at spelling (which she is).
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