Typing Class

One of my typing classes, in action

Standing over him, I could see his hands shaking as they hovered over the keys.

“Mek sua se ol finga blo yu oli tachem ol stret ki blem. Spos no, bae yu lusum stret ples blem.”

(“You have to make sure to keep your fingers resting lightly on the keys, otherwise you’ll lose track of where they should be.”)

He laughed a little, said okay, and yet his hand still hovered.

Trying another tack, and knowing people here are nervous around computers I said, “Yu no fraet lo hem! Bae yu no brekem! Emi strong we i strong” (“Don’t worry! You won’t break the keyboard! It’s pretty sturdy.”)

We were in my office at the Provincial Center, doing a short make-up typing lesson so he could join the rest of the group in typing class later in the day. Jackson was a new student, and as with most of my students, quite nervous about being around a computer. I’d taught him the basics: proper posture, where your fingers should sit on the keyboard, the bumps on ‘f’ and ‘j’ to help orient yourself…and then it had time to start practicing left hand home row keys, aka ‘a’,’s’,’d’, and ‘f’.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a small script that generated random combinations of letter (and for later lessons, words that only contain certain set letters), and printed them out to a document. This is what I use to help me teach class. I had Jackson open up the first practice document and after showing him how the page was laid out, left him to his work while I went back to mine on the other side of the desk.

After a few minutes, I went around to check on him, and was surprised to see a large paragraph of letters at the top of the page. First thinking he had picked it up more quickly than I’d expected, I soon realized that he was too nervous, and his hands were shaking so much that he was pressing all sorts of wrong keys. A long line of d’s followed a jumble of alksdfl, and so on. I realized he’d need a little bit more hands-on help, and got to work. Once I got him over his fear of touching the keyboard, I verbally walked him through the next line of text, and then the one after that. I could see that as we went along, he was gaining confidence in his skill, and beginning to learn the placement of his letter. I left him to the rest of the exercise, and walked back around to my side of the desk.

We finished up the next couple of lessons (now he knew the whole home row), and it was time for class with everyone else. The topic for the lesson was the top row (‘q’ through ‘p’), and class went pretty smoothly. While walking behind my students, watching them practice, and giving them some tips as I went along, I noticed that Jackson was working quickly (at least relatively) and with confidence. I was so happy to see the progress he’d made in such a short time, particularly in his confidence level! I have everyone take a test at the beginning and end of every lesson, so I can help track progress, and when we took the test at the end of class, I was happy to see that Jackson performed just as well (or better!) than the students that were on their third weeks of classes.

Typing class is quickly becoming something I look forward to each week, particularly because I get to see transformations like this happen in such a short time. While there’s still a lot of ambiguity about my job, it’s definitely a lot more clear than it was even just a month ago. I’m finding my place in the community, both socially and within the confines of my job.