I'm TRYING to post occasionally, even during ridiculously busy weeks, just so we know, when we look back, what we were doing during the weeks of few blog posts!
Yesterday was Jack's IGCSE Drama Practical. In school, this would be a simple matter. As a home-educator, this was far from straightforward to arrange. Nevertheless, the theatre was booked, the videographer was rescheduled, the theatre technician showed up, the Drama teacher had all in hand, scripts had been learned and props and costumes all remembered. 18 home-educated teenagers in three groups had devised pieces which each had to be filmed in one shot and then sent off to the examiner. This constitutes 50% of the total marks for this exam.
And Jack had a stinking cold. Complete with fever, headache and completely blocked nose. I gave him Beechams flu plus or whatever it was called. And a coke. I figured the caffeine could help.{vbg} Normally, I keep Jack and caffeine away from eachother.
We drove in to Oxford and dropped Jack at the theatre to rehearse. Jamie and I sat in a coffee shop for an hour and caught up with eachother. For the last month, he's either been on the late shift (till midnight) or at an evening music rehearsal and we have NOT seen eachother except in passing. Even our anniversary was not spent alone, but we took the kids out for a meal too! So, this was bliss. An hour alone together to talk.
We have another Life-Songs concert this Saturday and another planned for May. We cannot believe how much has gone wrong with these two. People having to drop out through illness, venue suddenly becoming unavailable, equipment problems, logistical and financial difficulties. Everyone is so encouraging, telling us the 'it'll all be alright on the night' which I have no doubt it will, but that little phrase doesn't account for the amount of time and energy Jamie and I have to put in to ensuring that it will be alright on the night!{g} And the fear is always that not enough people will come to have made it all worth-while. It has been very easy to become dispirited this last week.
We returned to the theatre for the students' live performances. Most were very good. Fortunately, I could hear and understand Jack! It was impressive to see how well the groups had gelled and how good the scripts were that they'd written. I'm curious to see how their grades turn out.
I couldn't believe, however, how many of the kids had speech impediments. Maybe a third. It left me wondering if home-educating parents are just less likely to notice speech problems than school teachers or something. Mmmm...odd. Also several of the kids had foreign accents (French, American, New Zealand and South African.) That made for some interesting interactions!
Jack's group had to record theirs again due to some timing issue, which they were NOT happy about, especially as the stage floor was now soaking wet from stage blood from the performance of another group! The videos will be checked and if all is good, they will be sent off to the external examiner for grading. The written paper is in a few weeks and the results won't be in until August.
Jamie dashed off to the other side of the city to pick Grace up from college and we rendezvoused in front of that glorious landmark, the Randolph Hotel. A good place for a rendezvous, I always think! {g} Many are the people I have met there. As Jack and I waited under the canopy (it was raining) we were bustled out of the way by gentlemen in black suits and dark glasses. Very Important People were being escorted out of the hotel and into waiting Daimlers. I didn't recognise them.{g}
Back home, I made Jack his favourite dinner: macaroni cheese, and he coughed and spluttered his way through the evening.
Half an IGCSE exam done. The exam season has begun.
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15 comments:
Glad Jack managed to get through his exam. Good luck with the written part.
These New Zealand accents - can't be doing with them! LOL
Sorry to hear you are having problems with the concert. Hoping to get there, depends on what night we get tickets for a show OS is doing at school.
I can only imagine the "fun" of those exams. I know MJ's teachers at MIS encouraged all the students to take them... but since a)she wasn't going to a European college and b)she'd missed all of the 9th grade work, it made no sense.
It certainly sounds like life is keeping you all busy.
As for speech stuff - my take is many homeschooling parents just don't care. That sounds bad. But if it's just their child & they can understand them they probably don't want to bother with speech. Most require interaction with the public school system & most parents want to avoid that.
I say this in part because I have a friend who two boys ages 16 & 13 who have speech issues & I sometimes I have a hard time understanding them but she doesn't.
However, I ended up having my oldest take three years of speech therapy but finally pulled him when we decided to school at home full time. Anyway... ;-)
I'll be praying for LifeSongs. Would LOVE to see video sometime?!?! Hint...hint...hint... LOL
Lisa, this is what is so concerning. These are young people, aged 14-17, who are about to start going for interviews for college/university/jobs etc and who can't form words correctly. It's not impressive.
I think some mums also think it's really *sweet* that their 4 year old lisps. {g} And so did I. But I knew it wouldn't look sweet when she was 25 and going for a job which involved using the phone or meeting the public or something.
I hadn't realised until yesterday how common all kinds of speech difficulties seem to be in the HE community here. Interesting that it might be the same in the US too.
Lorraine, it would be great if you are able to come, but don't stress about it!
I loved the accents yesterday. I love that Jack gets to socialise with people from all over the world. The accents weren't a problem, just interesting!
Renee. Jack didn't do any of the work in the year/grade you are referring to either. He only started the courses in Sept.
Normally they are 2 year courses. These HE kids are all taking them in one year. It remains to be seen whether that was a wise move on the part of their parents to let them do this! We'll know in August when the results are published!
I remember exams...I did the IB's at the end of highschool in Austria. I was under less stress than most of the kids taking them, as I had already been accepted to and made plans to attend a University in the States. Even so, the pressure of two weeks of exams was intense!
I hope Jack feels better...sounds like it's time for some homemade chicken soup! I'd send you some if I could. :)
The homeschool children around here seem to have good speech. We are the only ones that I am aware of who have children with speech issues, and my area of the country has a large percentage of homeschoolers. Of course, our issues are delayed speech rather than impediments. We homeschool because of these issues(poor services - long story). Our eldest is normalized, but now I've got my daughter following in his footsteps.
I don't know much about speech impediments. I wonder if some of them are not completely correctable(neurological conditions),or maybe it's just a matter of time and attention to correct these issues. I would think drama would be excellent for learning to correct speech issues, especially lazy speech.
Praying for Lifesong.
Poor Jack being ill on such a big day but it sounds like he pulled it off well.
Speech - I wonder if homeschooler's are slow to note difficulties as they get used to understanding their child? Of course this wouldn't account for incredibly noticeable stuff. I don't know.
Paula, IB's are the most useful qualification here as they are so highly regarded. But they aren't available to HE'ers, unfortunately.
Alexandra, my friend, the speech therapist, says that all speech difficulties in children can be improved or eradicated, even when there's an underlying neurological cause. She sometimes works with adults to help them 'find their true voice'. I just think it's strange that parents would not want to intervene as early as possible. I remember working so hard with Grace to help her pronounce her 's'. It was a lot of work, but sooooo worth it.
DeEtta, I think that is it, at first. Perhaps they have nothing to compare their child's speech to and they get used to it? But when it impedes understandability at age 17, that's a problem.
Dorothy, I notice when hsers have speech impediments also. I do not know if it's more prevalent among hsers BUT they are also in a position where there is less peer pressure to speak correctly. They also have less consistent modeling of proper pronunciation.
My dd was 8 before she could say R. We took her to a private speech therapist and she corrected within 2-3 lessons. The therapist said even then that Trevor would likely copy Holly, and he did. He had difficulty with many sounds, most of which resolved with therapy when he was 6. It did take him longer to say his Rs too.
There seem to be two speech camps. One says early intervention is necessary to break the habit; that the longer you mis-form your sounds, the more you "own" that sound. The other says that kids eventually will self-correct. But it's SAD when they are teens, still unable to say sounds correctly and have no idea HOW to do it. It's irresponsible on the part of the parents (of course, I'm not talking about children who might have a valid reason for their impediment).
Kristine,
Is the 'they will eventually self-correct' something you've noticed among parents or speech therapists?
If the child is 3 years old, I do think it's fair to wait and see. Jack had an assessment at age 3 because he couldn't pronounce many, many sounds. I was advised by the therapist to 'keep an eye on it' and wait until for 4 for the next assessment. By 4 he was speaking perefectly.
But the same therapist noticed that Grace, at age 6, was not pronouncing her 's's and advised that we deal with it. It was fairly easy to correct. If we'd waited, I don't think she would have self-corrected.
Jack's best friend still lisps at age 15. But he has a very lazy way of speaking which involves not opening his mouth properly. His whole family speak like that. It's hard to know if such things are environment or genetics. But none of them have had speech therapy.
Interesting conversation. If it's a feature of Home Education, then it must be one of the very few disadvantages of HE that I've come across!
HEing there is the wonderful opportunity to spend more time with one's child one-on-one and help with the speech issues, but sometimes one really does need a bit of professional input, even to give advice on what I should be concentrating on doing (I could bamboozle the poor lad with every one of his speech and language issues in the one sitting, but I doubt that would get us very far! so which one to deal with at a given point in time is always difficult to know!)... ds has severe speech and language delay... but this is the HUGE stumbling block for me - it seems to be SO hard to get the professional help BECAUSE I'm HEing and provision at his age (7 nearly) and on the NHS is geared up to be done through the schools... and I don't have 2 pennies to rub together to go private... a dilemma I'm still working on! The Paed even seemed exasperated by the system! So maybe that could have some bearing on your observations of HEd children and their language difficulties?
Hi Esther,
The delivery of speech therapy in the school setting is a very recent development. It always used to be in the home or at the dr's surgery (office). The age of the children I'm talking about (young adults) would have had no difficulty in accessing services. To get an assessment for each of my children (and a couple of follow up sessions for G) all I did was go through my GP and HV. I had appointments at the surgery a couple of weeks later.
I'm sorry that the situation seems to have changed in recent years and that you are having problems.
Dorothy,
You might recall from my posts years ago on the SHS loop how difficult a time we had with one of our dd's speech. It really was a huge problem! We spent the better portion of two years working on only speech and math hoping to beat the "window" on the speech issues. You know how they say you have to learn trilling "r's" for spanish and the throaty sound for German, etc., by a certain age or normally you just can't do it later. We didn't want to miss that window with correcting dd's speech. We know several people who have kids with what I think are speech issues who I guess are just used to it and don't think it's a big deal. If it were me, I'd be all over fixing it as quickly as possible because it won't matter what the child has to say later in life as an adult, if they aren't understood... Anyway. Interesting thought about HE's perhaps having a bigger problem with it...
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