The Observation

He had set himself up in the kitchen. Laptop resting on the white table. The television was on in the next room. A football game, half-time I think. I noticed his posture, back straight, arms bent and fingers resting lightly on the keyboard. I could hear occasional sounds coming from the direction of his daughter's bedroom. This was the setting. I pulled a chair close to his and commenced observations. 

I asked him to speak when he could, to share what was going on in his mind as he worked through his lesson. There was little talk and I didn't want to sway the observation with interjections. So I took notes as I sat. 

You could tell he was uncertain. It was the way he leaned into the screen to read the text and then look down at his hands on the keys. Never quite sure that he had his fingers in the right place. I could see him feel for the grooves on the "F" and "J" keys that would tell him his fingers were in the right place. When he felt more confident about his positioning he told me he was going to start typing. It was extremely slow. I watched his fingers, and his eyes. He struggled to not look at the keyboard. I watched him forcibly push himself despite repeated mistakes and having to start the lesson over and over again. For nearly ten minutes it went this way. In silence. Nothing but the sound of his fingers on the keyboard and me scratching notes onto a pad of paper. 

He stopped typing and told me he was going to take a short break. He stretched his fingers and stepped outside. 

Upon his return he pulled up to the table, straightened his back and began the lesson again. I noted that he didn't struggle as much finding his finger placement on the keyboard. It was still slow, but it wasn't as slow. He said that he was having particular difficulty with the "C" key. Like his finger just didn't want to bend that way. He then said but that's not even the hardest part. It's just not looking at the (@*! keyboard. I recalled this same frustration when I had taught myself to type some ten years ago.

But more than anything, I saw that despite moments of keen frustration, that he kept going. During the first part of the observation his  finger would miss a key and he would sort of growl under his breath, he wasn't doing that this time. I also noted that as he relaxed he actually got better. He didn't look at the keyboard so much, and he didn't make as many mistakes. He finished the lesson and looked up at me and asked me if I wanted to observe the next lesson. I did. I wanted to see that if his relaxing into the session would make the next lesson easier than it had been when starting fresh and still tense. 

It did. The difference was obvious. He wasn't picking up speed as much as he was reducing errors. He got through the next lesson in half of the time it took to complete the previous. He also engaged more. And told me that while he still believed that he was a terrible typist, that he could see himself getting better. He was actually to some degree enjoying the lessons in the sense that he was learning something useful. We were both observing in our own ways the same thing, his learning, his frustration and ultimately his slow and steady success. 

In our later interview he would say something that really struck me:

I'd actually like to keep working at this. I should have done this

years ago. But when I was in school typing classes were only for

girls. Boys just were not taught to type. And later, I just never

really thought about learning it as a skill, and they didn't teach

typing at the academy. [The academy is where Peter went to

become a Corrections Officer] We learned a lot there. But nothing

about office skills.

This to me is the heart of learning. The desire to keep going even when you do not have to. And this statement is what has made this case study entirely worth while.