It is the end of the semester. The D-day has finally  dawned. The children have to be tested for what they have learnt and ready to move to the next class.
The stress is palpable.
These kids are no different. They hate the exams and ask us why can't  life be simple and fun ?
One should learn and move ahead rather than being subject to this torture!
The children of our school are all intelligent in their own ways .They feel anxious for they don't understand why they have to write the exams.Some of them may have motor and sensory issues and some don't understand the questions.
Some hyperactive children  find it difficult to sit for two hours and focus on the paper in one stretch.
And there are some who can't read their own name but find flaws in the work of others in a jiffy.
The children of our school rely on structure and routine to cope with the life activities and exam time is something new and different from their set pattern and so it induces anxiety all the more amongst them.
How do we calm them?
The children are made familiar with what would happen on that day by running
small mocks .
We want them to take the exam boldly .So we revise and reinforce with them multiple times and they come and tell us: "This is it!"
What tests all our ingenuities is to make the hyperactive kids like Mohit write the exam!
We designed the  question papers to suit each child's interest and aptitude.
Questions  in Geeta's papers were framed to highlight colours and beauty accessories in different formats and maths questions were based on recipe
quantities.
Sham was asked questions pertaining to martial arts in both language and maths.
And what tested us the most was framing questions for Akash, the musical maestro.
We want to make learning and life fun for them.
And we also have social butterflies like Mahima who is adept at finding mistakes in others work  but cannot focus on her own.During the exam,she will focus more on her neighbour's answer rather than her own.
She was made to write her exam alone with a teacher.
We cope up with disjointed alphabets and jumbled sentences with aplomb.
We applaud  our children for their small strides.
We gave the children time to calm and release their stresses before sitting for the exam.We emphasized on them that they dont have to be afraid of their stress and anxiety for it would only motivate them to perform better.
We devised an ingenious method to calm the perturbed minds. We used brief affirmations on placards that children were made to read again and again like:"I am not scared but happy and calm";"I am a fighter" These positive repeated reinforcements did the trick.
These children have rigid thinking and dislike making mistakes and often don't finish the task on time.One child used to write exquisitely and spent all the time writing perfect calligraphic letters and  felt distressed on not achieving the perfect result and experienced misery on failure. We praised him for his stupendous effort and reassured him that he will learn only by making mistakes.
Holding hands with them and walking by their side has been a journey of self discovery and learning for me too.l have learnt to fall and get up again.I now know how to smile behind my tears.
Small hiccupps don't deter me for I  I drown them with a gulp of water or as my young friend would say:"l'll punch you down".