By Steve Huffman
Salisbury Post
At 90, Irene Edwards makes no bones about it.
“I’m so old I don’t even buy green bananas anymore,” she said, laughing.
But that doesn’t mean that Edwards, who for 30 years taught English at A.L. Brown High School, is too old to learn a new trick.
She lives at Trinity Oaks, one of several residents from the retirement community learning the ins and outs of computers thanks to one-on-one tutelage from Salisbury Academy eighth-graders.
Every Monday, students travel to Trinity Oaks to offer the senior citizens guidance intended to make them computer savvy. The tutoring period stretches 10 weeks.
Group members started with lessons on how to turn a computer on and off and will progress to such heady topics as pod casting, accessing the Internet and sending and receiving digital photographs.
All that’s well and good, but Edwards said the only thing she wants from a computer is to learn how to send and receive e-mails so she can stay in touch with her children and grandchildren.
Asked if she’s yet reached that stage in her learning, Edwards grinned but didn’t reply. Meanwhile, her instructor, Kaylin Hunter, one of Salisbury Academy’s eighth-graders, shook her head emphatically back and forth.
Then the senior citizen student and 13-year-old teacher both laughed.
“I couldn’t do it without her,” Edwards said, pausing from her work at the keyboard to pat Kaylin’s hand. “We just have a wonderful time.”
Karen Leonard, director of leisure activities for Trinity Oaks, said the project involving the retirement center and Salisbury Academy comes through a $25,000 grant from AT&T.
The money was used to buy computers and related equipment for the center. The AT&T grant is restricted to not-for-profit organizations like Trinity Oaks.
Leonard referred to the lessons as part of “inter-generational programming,” noting that the seniors are going to give students instruction on how to play bridge before the session is complete.
“We all have something to learn, every age,” Leonard said.
She said that when news of the computer classes was posted at the senior center, 42 residents signed up within two hours, demand so great that another class will be taught in the fall.
Leonard also noted that students from Catawba and Livingstone colleges and Hood Theological Seminary will visit Trinity Oaks this summer to continue giving residents computer instruction.
Dana Evans is director of technology at Salisbury Academy and the school’s computer instructor. She said the work at Trinity Oaks fits into service projects that Salisbury Academy requires of its students.
The service projects, she said, encourage students to work throughout the community, dealing with individuals with whom they might not otherwise cross paths.
“They’re not awkward,” Evans said of students’ work with senior citizens. “They know how to work with people.”
She said one of the biggest problems students have faced at Trinity Oaks involves residents wanting to bypass much of the instruction and go straight to doing whatever it is they want from a computer.
For instance, learning how to e-mail is high on the list of priorities for most of the center’s residents.
“Sometimes, the students have to tell them they’ll have to wait,” Evans said. “They sometimes have to reign the residents back. We’ve had students come and ask us, ‘How do we do that respectfully?’ ”
In something of a reversal of roles, Evans and Leonard also laughed about the 13- and 14-year-old “teachers” asking if it’s OK if their senior citizen “students” sign on to the Internet.
Lallah Heath, a Trinity Oaks resident who spent 57 years of her adult life in Kannapolis, did something Monday she’d never before done ó she Googled.
Specifically, under the watchful eye of her instructor, Jenna Boyd, Heath Googled “Final score for Chapel Hill and Kansas.”
She got numerous hits.
“This is one page and this is another,” Jenna explained, pointing to the various Web sites that were linked to UNC’s loss to Kansas in the NCAA basketball tournament.
“So I choose one of these?” Heath asked.
She said she was interested in researching the subject because she had a son and a daughter who both attended UNC.
Horace Rhyne is another Trinity Oaks resident and admitted he wasn’t much of an expert when it came to keyboarding, much less accessing the Internet.
“I’m not doing too good, am I?” Rhyne asked his instructor, Alex Lee, during the midst of Monday’s instruction.
Alex reassured his newfound senior citizen friend that he was doing fine and even gave him a fast lesson on how to keep from typing all his words in capital letters.
“See?” Alex asked, pointing to the computer screen, “you take the caps lock off and that little blue light goes off.”
Rhyne nodded his head, another lesson learned.
Monday’s main lesson revolved around Microsoft word processing, and eighth-grader Erika Nelson said Frank Skiles, the Trinity Oaks resident with whom she worked, was a fast learner.
“He’s so smart, we finished early this morning,” Erika announced.
Skiles smiled and said Erika deserved the credit.
“She showed me a lot,” he said.
Contact Steve Huffman at 704-797-4222 or shuffman@salisburypost.com.