Re-teaching

At work on Mondays and Tuesdays I oversee 18 workers, three at a time, as they use the internet. I've been supervising this since mid October. The evidence of the workers' mental illnesses is most evident during this time. The workers have differing levels of ability when it comes to computers. Some have access to computers at home and there is clear evidence. Others however are sitting down in front a computer for the first time.

I have shown them, many of them on multiple occasions, how to use google for searches. One of the difficult parts of this is when having shown a worker eight or nine times how to make use of a search I find that they search, look at the search results page and then proceed to search for something else without having actually looked at a web-page. It seems as though some of them will never understand how to actually get information out of a search without help. Another difficult part is that for some of them after two or three weeks of no computer use they have to relearn how to do things they previously could do.

I should make it clear that there are also others who after months away from a computer can sit down and type up the weekly menu for the cafeteria. Some of the workers are more "lightly" handicapped than other. I doubt that I would necessarily notice that some of the "lightly" handicapped were even handicapped if I didn't know otherwise.

When you interact with people that do not suffer from degenerating illnesses you assume that they will develop abilities. However in my work I have had to get used to the fact that some of the workers' abilities don't develop and in a few cases their abilities are very slowly diminishing.