In rain, snow, or 90 degree weather I carry ten laptop computers from my car to a little classroom on any given day of the week. I have about 10 minutes to unwind, set up each laptop, and squeeze in a few shameless minutes of surfing the internet before students start to filter in. As a child raised on computer games and typing tutorials I can say that it takes about as much thought to check my email as it does to breathe.
I can’t say the same for my students who walk through the door and take their places behind the laptops. They bite their nails and nervously talk too much to their neighbor, wondering if they will be making fools out of themselves in the next two hours.
“Tonight’s class is called Meet the Mouse and each of you will be introduced to the laptop sitting in front of you.”
Pairs of eyes peer up at me from behind the monitors.
As I teach each student how to properly hold a mouse, how to open a program, and how to save documents, they begin to open up and let their fears be known. Almost all of my students are senior citizens and I can’t tell you how many times they’ve told me that I’m at an advantage because I grew up with computers while they were using slide rules in school. Many have never touched a computer before. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine that the concept of saving a document can be so abstract to my students, but I keep an immense amount of patience and understanding when telling a student for what feels like the hundredth time, “Please click directly on the icon, not the left of it. Not to the right of it either; directly on it.”
Finally, I found a way to relate. Since most of my students are older women, I started asking them if they knew how to sew. Most of the time, their faces would light up with that expression of, “Yes! Something I understand!” And I would explain to them that they need not feel intimidated when they come to my class because each and every one of them has a skill that I do not understand because we all grew up in different times, with different parents, etc.
This technique worked beautifully. The women really responded to feeling superior in at least one skill. Of course, it didn’t turn them into computer whizzes and they still tried to furiously double-click in the blank space on the desktop occasionally, screaming, “Why won’t Microsoft Word open?!” But with each class they were less overwhelmed.
One day while visiting my Grandpa, my Grandma’s old sewing machine came up in conversation and sparked an idea. Maybe learning how to sew and talking to them about it in class would allow me to relate to them even more. They would see that learning a new skill isn’t really all that daunting. So I found my Grandma’s old Necchi machine, took her home and cleaned her up. She sat beautifully on my old wooden desk and I felt so domestic sitting down to a sewing machine instead of a computer that night. I had patches all ready for a couch-cover and just needed to sew them up.
But…what’s a bobbin? And where does this end of the thread go? I tried every possible coordination of thread here, spool there, press this button and voila! But nothing worked. I couldn’t make a single stitch. I started viscously swearing at and threatening the machine I had praised only a few hours ago. Finally I resorted to searching on the internet for some instructions for myself. How did these women learn how to sew if they didn’t have Google to give them a detailed video for dummies? Perhaps their mothers taught them.
But with my mother 1000 miles away, I found a video online (yet another difference in how each generation learns) and again, foolishly thought I was on my way to smooth sailing. I learned what the bobbin does, how to get the thread to wrap around it, and where to put it. All I needed to do was thread the needle and start sewing. Threading the needle was the easy part. Every time I pushed my two pieces of fabric underneath the needle and pressed on the foot pedal, the needle frantically dipped and dipped before stopping completely and leaving me with a mess of knotted thread caught on the underside of the fabric. And every time I yelled and cursed and growled and slammed my elbows on the table before resting my head on my hands in a dramatic fashion. The patience I pride myself with in my classroom had quickly dissipated.
I read through the entire instruction manual online before finally finding the crucial step that I had been missing. I guess threading the needle hadn’t been so easy after-all, because once the loop is through the eye you actually have to pull the loop all the way through so there’s only a tail. Oooh. So I did this, gently pushed my pieces of fabric under the needle yet again, and pressed the pedal down slightly…
A whole two inches of stitches! I was so happy I jumped up and started yelping with happiness. I felt extremely empowered.
The next day in class I couldn’t wait to see my students so I could tell them about my experience. They were pleased to hear that I had decided to learn the craft of sewing, but even more so to hear that it wasn’t as easy as I had expected it to be. They giggled and whispered about how silly leaving the loop in the eye of the needle was, and I imagine that those giggles were not unlike my own at times, wondering why some students can’t easily grasp seemingly simple tasks on the computer.
I knew that taking on the task of learning how to sew would be challenging, but I had no idea to what extent. I wanted to relate to my students and share with them that I had become just as frustrated as they get with the computers, yet I still learned an important introduction to using a sewing machine. So I pushed myself through the anger and desperation of learning a completely foreign skill. Now I’ve got over five sewing projects started and continue to keep my students informed on my progress.
