Should You Send Your Child to Summer School or Teach Him/Her at Home?

I remember when my son was 10 years old. He was struggling with hand writing and we had tried everything. From occupational therapy to special handwriting curriculums, to weighted gizmos that you write on. Nothing worked. His scribbling was at best, slightly legible...at worst, unintelligible. Bad penmanship runs in our family. Poor kid; He has bad genes. Now, let's move on, to keyboarding. Problem is, who will teach him? I was determined to find a patient teacher and a classroom full of other burned out cursive writing flunkies.

We couldn't find a class at all for his age in our school district. So I moved on to the neighboring district. I found a class, enrolled him, dropped him off at the school full of barely awake kids at eight in the morning. My son was ready and willing. Unlike some kids who are forced into summer school, he knew keyboarding was his way to freedom of expression, or at least, a respite from endless pages of writing the letter L over and over again.

When I picked him up, he looked bored and frustrated. They spent the entire time playing games on the computer. This wasn't a keyboarding class at all. I promptly withdrew him and moved on. We found another class at a local Catholic high school in the area. I thought for sure, they would make him into a master keyboarder by the end of the session. Wrong again...This time the teacher instructed the students to follow a typing program anyone could order online.

I began to ask myself what I was looking for. I didn't want my child to get into the habit of hunting and pecking. I learned to type by taking a secretarial class while I was in college. The teacher was a drill sergeant. I hated her. But boy did I learn to type. And it was the best class I ever took in college, hands down. My friends who were taking loftier classes like Russian Literature and Eastern Philosophy made fun of me. I didn't care. I could type them under the table.

So I began to think. I could be that drill sergeant. And off we went. Every morning we had a typing class. My son learned, despite a lot screaming and yelling and threats. I can't say he was an expert typist by the end of the summer, but he wasn't hunting and pecking anymore. And by the time he got to eighth grade, he found the kind of teacher I had. She knew how to teach keyboarding to kids...finally.

My son is a sophomore in high school now, and is darned good at keyboarding, because he has to be. So, would I teach my kid beginning typing again? If I had to. But I hope that now there are more keyboarding classes for younger kids. I've heard cursive writing is no longer mandatory in grade school. Now that's progress!