Audrey Henkin is our Volunteer of the Month for this month.  Audrey has been involved as a volunteer for SeniorComp for several years.  She prefers to teach the course called Intro to Computers I.  Audrey says that she has always enjoyed teaching.  For several years she taught primary grades and students with learning disabilities in the Chicago Public Schools.

Audrey and her husband Ed have been involved with computers since 1979 in several ways. One of the connections was with Peachtree software.  Peachtree’s accounting software is one of the leading accounting packages for small businesses. These two ran the South Texas Support Center for Peachtree for ten years, eventually selling it to one of their technicians.

Audrey especially enjoys working with the Senior Adults in the SeniorComp classes.  She says that computers are a wonderful tool to help older people keep their mental abilities sharp, and to help them keep up with the modern world.  We quite often have Seniors sign up for a SeniorComp class and say that the reason they are signing up is that they know computers are important in the world today and they don’t want to get left behind.

The other major reason that Seniors sign up for the classes is that they want to learn how to work e-mail so that they can correspond with their children and grandchildren, who may live many miles away.  This way they can keep in close contact with their offspring, even sending recent pictures back and forth by e-mail. I talked to a grandmother recently who showed me pictures of her new grandson, born in a hospital in Mississippi.  The pictures were taken about 30 minutes after the child’s birth, and the grandmother had them on her computer here in Texas and printed out within the first  hour of the child’s life.  The grandmother was thrilled to high heaven.  I had helped her upgrade her computer, and her enthusiasm for it as a tool for communicating with her adult children was fantastic!

Audrey and her husband Ed like to work together as a team in teaching her classes.  She lectures and checks on students, and Ed works the projector and the laser pointer.  They also use Teaching Assistants in their classes.  This helps tremendously in keeping track of what each student is doing with the task at hand.  The Teaching Assistants move around in the classroom, helping any students who are struggling to complete the activity.  The Assistants usually have also taken these  classes, so they know exactly where the problem areas lie.  The students also have a textbook and receive handouts during every class session.  Each student is seated in front of a computer and is asked to personally apply what is being studied by the class.  This is definitely a hands-on session.

SeniorComp and AlamoPC are lucky to have people like Audrey and Ed Henkin who volunteer their time and use their expertise to help other people learn more about computers. In the case of many Seniors this means enriching their lives, helping them stay mentally alert,  and improving their communication with their families.