Tokyomarie
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Posts posted by Tokyomarie
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What is considered to be the typical amount of time a graduate student should spend on coursework? Total number of hours per credit? If you give number of hours/week/credit, please state how many weeks the course lasts if it is not a full quarter or semester.
I'm currently taking online graduate courses. Just trying to figure out how my workload compares to the typical student's.
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So glad you were successful in getting accommodations approved! I'm sure it is a relief for your family to have this in place.
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I just confirmed the arrangements for my son to come home for Thanksgiving. His school gives the entire week off. Very few students would be able to travel home if the school held classes through Wednesday because it is so far from home, even for most in-state students. It's 530 miles for us; not so far that he can't come home, but not a quick run for us to go pick him up, either. He found a ride with another student, leaving after lunch on Friday, and we'll pick him up about an hour from home. He'll ride back with the same student next weekend.
Looking forward to seeing ds! It has been 3 months!
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Agree with other posters who suggest planning a family vacation outside of drop off dates. It's just too dicey to try to figure anything else at this point.
Story about things not always working out according to the ideal- when my second child was planning to leave for college, she was going less than 2 hours away. I fully expected the family to go together to move her in and say goodbye. It was just going to be a day trip with maybe stopping by my parents for dinner. Then I broke my wrist. On move in day, I was at home recovering from surgery to repair the fracture. Dh did the move in gig without me.
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I learned to keep checking and/or have the student check up on the status of the application- which parts have been documented as received by the admissions office and which ones are still outstanding. Nothing is more disconcerting than to find out a transcript for outside courses, a recommendation, or even the application itself as not been documented as received by the admissions office. Yes, making sure the student has hit submit once the application has been finalized is important!
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I should also add that my perspective comes from a place of not qualifying for ANY financial aid. So for US, there was a HUGE difference in cost for one of those "lesser" schools that offered a large National Merit package and those for which we had to pay full freight because no merit aid of any type was offered.
This was our position. We absolutely did not qualify for any financial aid except for an 8.5% Parent PLUS loan. My dh and I were not willing to take out any loans ourselves for our children's college education, let alone pay 8.5%. No way on earth are we putting ourselves in a position to have to work until we are 80 years old to pay off loans! Nor are we willing to encourage our children to take on $100,000 or more of debt over a course of 4 years.
My oldest daughter was a National Merit Scholar. She chose a school on the "Colleges That Change Lives" list that offers major scholarship dollars to any NMF who chooses to attend. That scholarship allowed her to attend a private college for far less than total in-state university costs.
She was the only one of our children who qualified. Our next child had some very good test scores and we looked carefully at scholarship opportunities offered for those test scores, even though she didn't make NM.
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Thank you all for responding and confirming what my gut is saying. And not biting. ;)
We live near a major university; but, even though it's my alma mater, I don't know enough about if/what types of evaluations may be available. Between the universities in the area (there are several) and the children's hospital I at least know where to start researching.
I would suggest looking for a private practice neuropsychologist in that area. Sometimes those who are actually associated with universities are not as tuned in to looking at both the strengths and weaknesses in a child's/student's profile. But often the best private practice neuropsychs locate in areas where there is a university community because there is a stronger referral base and a stronger network of other professionals to refer families to for further assessment and therapy or tutoring.
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I agree with Elizabeth that a neuropsychologist would give you the most comprehensive evaluation. In addition to finding a professional who is homeschooling friendly, it sounds like you also want to find someone who is experienced with bright-to-gifted students who also have learning difficulties. Twice exceptional is the term most often used to refer to gifted students with learning challenges of some kind (LDs, ADHD, Autism Spectrum). Your son may or may not fall in the gifted range, but he certainly is very bright if he is reading above grade level and translating Virgil & Caesar. You can google your state (or your city) + neuropsychologist + learning disabilities to see if any websites pop up. If you live in a smaller town or city, you might need to check a city with a university to find someone.
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Five years to finish an education major is now fairly typical because of increasing state requirements for licensure/certification. One of my children was encouraged to consider an education major and was told at the outset that it would take 5 years. She wasn't keen on teaching in a public school classroom, so didn't go that route, but the 5 year plan comments stuck in my mind. Also, I would expect the double major to add time.
The shifting advice from the advisor is not cool and should not be expected. I would encourage a student in that situation to find someone else at the university- the dean of the department or, perhaps, someone in the registrar's office to sit down with the student to go over the requirements as they are laid out in the catalog for the year in which she entered the program. Many colleges now have online degree audits where courses taken or transferred in are mapped to degree requirements. If your daughter's school doesn't have that available, she can probably get a degree audit done through the registrar's office to settle where she stands at this point.
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I do not have many years of experience with college accommodations. I am not in a position where I hear a lot of other people's stories. I only have experience with my two girls and three colleges. College one is nasty and snotty about them. They (lady in charge of disability office) belittle the dear student who is needing/requesting them. It is made quite clear that they will probably not be granted. In the end, they are and the teachers are extremely understanding and follow the rules to perfection. College two is super nice and promises all accommodations will be met. Paperwork is all filed. Lip service is given. No accommodations are followed through. (Granted, dear student probably needed to push harder. But, honestly, she shouldn't have needed to.) Yes, we could have sued the school. We just didn't want to go down that path. College three: just plain old didn't know what they were doing. (This is a disability due to a physical medical condition that came on fairly suddenly.) Told to fill out wrong paper work. Told to send in wrong forms. Lost proper forms when sent in. Multiple. Times. Dd did finally receive the accommodations, but between the wait to get into see a specialist and the school's bungling, it took an entire semester. This was a medical need that should have been granted immediately. (Fortunately, the need was so obvious that most (notice the MOST) of her teachers were understanding and gave accommodations anyway.)
So, my experience is not quite the same as yours. True, I have limited experiences, but the schools are at a rating of about 1/5 stars with accommodations if you ask me. The best school had me holding back from throwing punches with the way dd was treated, and it was the best one by far.
I'm sorry your daughters have had such a difficult time. And thanks for sharing. These are important additions to my data set. I think over the 10 years that I've been reading posts in a variety of places and talking to people locally, I've only heard of one other person who has had such a difficult experience at the college level. K-12, yes, many difficulties. College, much less so. One other student, a mature adult student in a master's degree program, had a professor try to refuse to allow him to record lectures, but the student was able to resolve it amicably by educating the professor on his disability and disability law.
The more typical difficulty occurs when the student is in denial about the need and refuses to use the accommodations that have been approved or is too fearful of approaching the professor to hand him a letter of accommodation and start the conversation about the details of using the accommodation.
For others coming down the road whose high school students have documented disabilities, it is a good idea to interview the director of disability services on a college visit, whether at the first visit or a return visit, but prior to making a commitment to attend. I found this helpful. My current college student is at a university where accommodations are not just grudgingly allowed, but where students are supported in using them. The other recommendation is to make sure your high school student is learning about how he/she learns best, how his/her documented disability affects performance, and how to advocate for his/her needs. The student who arrives on campus with good self awareness and good communication skills is in the best position to make use of the supports available.
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Yes, I know all of this.
It is important to realize that universities are only required to grant "reasonable accommodations" and that each institution decides what is reasonable for them. There is no uniform standard.
In regards to providing a paper trail, people also need to be aware that the existence of a paper trail is not a guarantee, either. I have a paper trail going back to first grade and am fighting The College Board for SAT accommodations. It's a mess.
I figured you knew this, but I wanted to make some clarifications for those who may not.
As for "reasonable accommodations," the vast majority of post-secondary institutions are good about granting the usual accommodations of extra time for testing, access to texts in alternative formats, access to getting notes in alternative formats, keyboarding for essay exams, etc. Where it gets more challenging is when a student is requesting more unusual accommodations that may shift into changing the fundamental nature of the course or changing graduation requirements. In most cases, those requests are denied because they result in "modification of coursework," which is not required at the post-secondary level.
In the many years of experience I've spent listening to other people's stories and experiencing our own, I've found that colleges have typically been better about managing accommodations than K-12 schools have. More families who had trouble for years trying to get accommodations in K-12 schools and actually get them implemented have found it easier when their child gets to college. Of course, at that point, the student has to take the initiative and parents are not part of the process unless the student explicitly allows it.
As for College Board, yes, that paper trail isn't a guarantee. We were approved on the first try by both College Board and ACT and we didn't have the paper trail until high school, except for a history of speech delay in the preschool years. However, we submitted evaluations done by 4 providers in 4 different disciplines that all converged on the same opinion regarding the need for certain typical accommodations. We also made sure that our evaluations included all of the kinds of tests that College Board requires. Our neuropsychologist is very experienced in this area so he knows the requirements well. I've known others who appear to have the need who were denied at least once, maybe more than once, but since I haven't seen the paperwork and student's history, I'm not aware of what might have kicked it out. In one student's case, ACT denied the request because, although the student had a 504 in place at school, he had refused to use his allowed accommodations and was getting good enough grades without them.
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504's and IEP's only apply to public school settings. They are not recognized by The College Board or EDS or universities. Each of them has their own special brand of hoops for students to jump through.
The 504s or IEPs written by public K-12 schools are not used by the testing agencies or the universities as written but they are *one* source of evidence that the student has been recognized as having a disability and has ben deemed eligible for accommodations in other environments. The testing agencies and universities do require up to date evaluations before granting accommodations. Up-to-date varies somewhat by the disability and by university policies.
The granting of accommodations by universities is covered under the ADA and Section 504.
I now encourage any parent of a child who could potentially require accommodations in a school or university setting or for high stakes testing to seek out evaluation before their child gets to high school age. It is so much easier to have those accommodations granted when there is a paper trail/established history of such a need.
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A standardized test that consists of multiple choice and requires you to just sit (mostly) for a 4 hour block is different from the quizzes and tests my dd gets in school. My dd is in an IB program so her exams are heavily essay format. On a very basic level multiple choice tests show what you don't know, but an essay exam is more likely to show what you do know. My dd's essays require analysis of topics, really complete digestion of information and applying such information to something new. Multiple choice tests have you just spitting back facts. So, I would not compare what is happening on the SAT or ACT to tests in classroom settings.
A tightly timed essay exam may not actually show what the student knows if that student has difficulties with expressive language. Such a student may test very, very well on multiple-choice tests because they can quickly recognize correct answers. The same student may not be able to translate thoughts into words, create coherent sentences, and organize paragraphs quickly enough to finish an essay test in the designated time. Yet, the same student may be able to demonstrate their knowledge in writing when writing for papers and projects out of class. This may result in a student whose in-class, timed essays are C or D whereas their portfolio writing gets an A or B.
When a student doesn't test well there can be many reasons why, which if understood early enough in the high school career may allow a family to find solutions which improve the scores. Some students are simply better served at colleges that have a more holistic admissions process.
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I agree with the others. I wish I had taken an O-G based course on multisensory teaching when my son was young. Cost of the course, I inability to find child care for 3 straight full time weeks, and major daily commute to the course location all out it out of reach for me. Had I truly realized the benefit I would have tried to make it happen in spite of the obstacles.
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I am not sure this is accurate.
the science is super clear that dyslexia is a brain issue not a vision issue. Its just not disputable at this point.
Yes, dyslexia IS a BRAIN issue. However, dyslexic children can have vision difficulties (other than visual acuity) that compound the reading problems. Some of those are treatable with vision therapy. When the vision problems are resolved, it is easier for a child to work on the dyslexia-related difficulties- whether it is phonemic awareness, phonics, morphology, or memory for word forms.
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Just to complicate matters, there is more than one philosophy of the purpose of grades and what an A means. Traditionally, grading is used as a way of sorting students into "the best and brightest" and so on down to the "worst and most incompetent." In this model, it may have been decided that the top however many percent of a class are the ones who may be admitted to the next class or the next step. As regentrude seems to indicate, in this system, exams are designed to made sure that the middle percentiles of the class only get a C. It's all about the Bell Curve for a given class, not necessarily about how much a student knows about a subject.
Another philosophy of grading is assessment that marks a student against certain benchmarks or standards. It is a mastery oriented approach. Certain benchmarks are established for a given course. If the student can demonstrate mastery of a certain body of material to the 90% or 93% level (whatever percentage is established for the A), then that student receives an A.
In the first approach only a certain percentage of students will receive an A. The exam is set to, hopefully, create that bell curve. In the second approach, all students have the possibility of receiving an A. If 100% of students meet the benchmarks, then 100% of the class receives an A. In the first approach that's not going to happen. In reality, even under the second system, for whatever reason, some students aren't going to demonstrate mastery at the A level. They will get a lower grade.
Many graduate programs require students to maintain at least a B average to continue. Many require students who get a C to retake the class. I'm assuming in this scenario, that grading reflects a mastery approach.
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Could this be an "intake" type of appointment where the doctor's aim is to get some background information and observe your daughter for a bit. Such an appointment can be used to develop a plan for further evaluation, which tests to use, which other professionals to refer to look at specific areas such as Speech and OT.
I would be hesitant to accept a final diagnosis based on a 1 hr appt. If further team-based evaluation isn't suggested, ask about it and ask about recommendations for therapies.
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Here are some links from the official College Board and ACT sites that describe the math sections for the SAT and ACT:
The SAT has no trigonometry questions, whereas the ACT does, though it comprises only about 5-10% of the test. A student who has finished at least Algebra II will have the best chance of scoring well. However, there is no single "passing score." There is a score that is the average of college bound seniors and it is generally considered that a score just slightly below that number is the approximate score needed to be considered "college ready." However, some colleges have a much more demanding curriculum and as such incoming students will be students who score higher.
One of my children is not a strong math student. She was in Algebra II when she took the SAT and she did score somewhat above the national average but not high, though I don't remember her scores without looking them up.
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I like Sandy's explanation regarding vision and dyslexia. Vision Therapy is a valid treatment for ocular motor deficits and certain visual processing deficits. But these things are not the underlying cause for dyslexia as it is currently defined in the dyslexia research and intervention community. They may exist in some people who also have dyslexia but they are not dyslexia.
The written language difficulties in dyslexia are just that: difficulty in processing language that results in difficulty with word level reading and spelling. Other aspects of written language can also be challenging for people with dyslexia , but the word level difficulties must be present. These are not issues that can be addressed through VT.
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I answered that it varies. It depends on the subject, it depends on the day, it depends on whatever else is going on in life, it depends on the child's basic personality, etc., etc., etc.
It also depends on the specific combination of weaknesses that a child exhibits, and the depth of those difficulties. One child with dyslexia or one child with autism isn't going to look exactly like the next child with the same diagnosis. I have two children who are extremely bright but have experienced learning difficulties. One eventually got the formal dyslexia diagnosis, the other didn't. The one who didn't initially got a receptive/expressive language disorder diagnosis. She is an adult now and did very, very well in college. Looking back, and knowing what I now know about dyslexia, I believe dyslexia is a name that describes her basic underlying processing style. While there are certainly common threads in the stories of these two children's educational development, there are also major differences. Therefore, the specific difficulties I had with teaching them were somewhat different.
When my children were young, it was loads of fun teaching them history and science at home. Doing hands on, reading aloud to them from DK and Usborne books as well as other books, watching videos on the topic, etc. were hands-down my favorite part of homeschooling my children with dyslexia.
Managing the basic skills was more challenging. My daughter was actually easier to teach than my son. When my son was young, his working memory and dysgraphia (fine motor skills & retrieval skills for letter formation) impeded our progress. It was just downright frustrating most of the time.
Something that is important to consider is how you will manage the working relationship for schooling your child. How will you manage your own frustration? What skills do you have for helping your child manage frustration and discouragement? Do you have the skills for keeping the interaction positive and focused in the face of difficulty? If not, how will you learn those skills? As a parent who wants to see your child make solid educational progress and who has already been researching options to make that happen, you appear to have the dedication to making homeschooling work. But it is good to reflect on how to keep the parent/child interaction going in a positive, healthy direction even when schooling is challenging.
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Did the evaluator do any other language testing? It certainly looks like your daughter has a language disorder that is impacting her verbal comprehension scores. 50 points difference between the VCI and PRI is ginormous! The difference is more than 3 standard deviations, which is quite unusual. My middle child had a 34 point difference in the same direction and that resulted in significant discrepancies in daily and academic function.
My first suggestion would be to try to locate a speech/language pathologist who (a) specializes in language disorders and (b ) has experience with students who have exceptional strengths in the visual/perceptual realm that accompany the weaknesses in language. Get some further testing and some help in devising strategies for teaching from this person in addition to whatever the Hive has to offer.
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Argh! I just lost a long post I was writing. So here are the cliff notes:
1. The exceptional scores in visual/perceptual reasoning (PRI) show your daughter's actual reasoning abilities, which are high.
2. We see a relative weakness in verbal reasoning (VCI). Even though these scores are dead set average they represent a highly significant difference from the visual reasoning scores.
3. The math problem solving (heavily dependent on language), word reading, and oral expression scores confirm that there are language based weaknesses that need further investigation, thus the referral to the SLP.
Look for an SLP who is highly experienced with children who have language disorders, not one whose primary experience is with articulation/speech production disorders. Also, look for an SLP who has experience with intellectually gifted students who have language disorders because it is harder to interpret results when there are some strong reasoning abilities that the student can use to compensate. Be sure to have the SLP evaluate all aspects of language: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. That will give you the best profile of your child's language function. Also, talk with the SLP about the possibility of an auditory processing disorder. APDs can be one reason why a child fails to develop strong vocabulary and other oral expression skills.
Some strategies to help with vocabulary and overall language development:
1. Use lots of visuals to support your explanations of concepts and word meaning. Dorling Kindersley and Usborne books are great for this age.
2. Five in a Row could be a good program for your daughter because of the visuals and the theme-based study which helps to connect words & concepts.
3. Play oral language games such as "I'm going to the zoo and I'm going to see an aardvark....etc," adding, in alphabetical order, the names of other zoo animals. You can play the same game by changing up the category: I'm going on a picnic and I'm going to take...; I'm going to the grocery store and I'm going to buy...." These games also help to strengthen memory.
That should be a good start to your thinking. It will be interesting to see how her language evaluation comes out.
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POL for my son is that he has logged into his online game (which my husband also plays) or his little green FB light is on (which I don't take as being ok necessarily for me to message him). I love the FYI and ? markers for messages.
We've been fortunate. Our son's university has been giving not-so-subtle hints for students to check in with their parents. We've gotten two calls from him because of messages posted on campus.
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Yup, this. The things we do aren't remotely normal for K5. (Today it was conversations on the Great Chicago Fire vs. 9/11, him telling me about 757s and flying supersonic, and him grilling me on where countries are in the British Isles.) The grade 13 solution is probably the best one, in reality.
I think you're on the right track. He may not even need the Gr. 13 option, but you won't know until he gets to high school age. If he's socially good with the K level kids and he's handling content like the above in informal learning, it doesn't make sense to hold him back.
Q re: Graduate coursework
in The College Board
Posted
I tried looking around online to get an estimate of expected amount of study. I couldn't find anything specific to graduate students but found in a number of official places (university websites), the oft-repeated expectation of 2 hours of study time/hr in class. One website said 2-3 hrs/hr in class each week. I attend an online master's/postmaster's certificate program through the UC system, which is on quarters. Each course is a half-term (6 weeks), so double the amount of time required. I estimate that a total amount of study I should put into a 3 unit course would be 108-144 hrs. Take 120 hours as a midpoint, divide by 6 weeks and I get 20hrs/week of study for one 3 unit course.
Two of my 3 unit courses were right around 20 hrs/week. The last 3 courses required 27-30 hours/week. On my current course, week 1 was on the lighter side (but the start date overlapped the last week of my previous course so I was also finishing my big project for that course). Weeks 2 & 3 were around 17-18 hrs. On Week 4, the number of assignments triples and the last two weeks don't look much lighter. I just about passed out over the weekend when I looked at this week's lesson and saw how much is assigned- I actually estimated it would require 55-60 hrs of work- on Thanksgiving Week, no less! On Monday, I contacted my instructor and indicated that it just wasn't going to be possible to do anywhere near that much work on this particular week. She's working with me, but it really got me to thinking about how the workload I've experienced compares to other programs. This is an interdisciplinary study, basically in the education & psychology fields.
My weekly assignments are 2-3 paragraph forum discussion responses, with responses to at least 2 other student's comments and 1.5-3 page papers that are reflections on the required reading. Each course has at least one final project which is much more involved. This week's assignments include 3 forum responses, 3 reflection papers, plus turning in the raft of business forms we are to create for use in a private practice. No way to get this all done in one week- a holiday week, no less!