BACK STORY

The Keyboard Town PALS story has its beginnings in a loss.   After 41 years of marriage, Rita Herman’s husband Emil suddenly passed away.

One day, later that year, Rita decided it was time to clean out the basement of her house.  Among the many things stored in the basement, was a typing program for the typewriter that had been given to her 50 years before by a seasoned teacher in the Penn Hills, PA, Public School system where Rita began her teaching career after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Education.  Mrs. Gallagher, Rita’s mentor, was concerned about a group of children in her class who had special needs.  Mrs. Gallagher reasoned that teaching these kids to type on a typewriter would make their work readable.

She attempted to teach them to type using the typing programs available to her. However, the children did not have the patience to stick with the repetitive exercises and dozens of boring drills which are the hallmark of all traditional typing programs. So, she decided to write her own curriculum; an age appropriate program, easy to learn, fun but one that was radically different. She decided to teach one finger at a time, vertically (azq) on the typewriter instead of the accepted horizontal approach (asdfg).  To her amazement the children quickly learned to type using her new method that she called PALS (Purposeful Associative Learning System)!

At the end of that school year, Mrs. Gallagher retired and gave the 50 page curriculum to Rita.

Decades later, while sitting in the basement reading the old typing manual, Rita began to wonder whether Mrs. Gallagher’s PALS method could be as effective on a computer keyboard as it had been on the typewriter.    She reviewed the entire instruction manual several times and decided the only way to know if the system worked was to find a student who could benefit from learning to keyboard and test out the PALS method. After adding puppets to the original storiest and rehearsing she set up an appointment at Falk Lab School to teach a child with Asperser’s Syndrome who was disrupting class and screaming in frustration because no one could read her writing.  After four fifteen-minute sessions, spread over a month, this child was keyboarding the lyrics of Disney songs and expressing her feelings about her recently deceased grandfather.  It dawned on Herman that children who keyboard properly are able to tap into their inner-creative voice.

The word spread about the success and swiftness of learning her program and she began to get phone calls.  Parents and teachers were willing to pay her $100.00 an hour to have a child learn this life-long skill in only an hour.  But Rita soon realized that she needed help.  This was definitely developing into a major project.  What was the next step?

It would be an understatement to say that Rita was not very technologically savvy.  She has no microwave, no cable TV, no internet or email address. She does have a rotary phone but no answering machine.  Rita turned to Donna Katz, her friend for 35 years and computer literate. Together they had worked on many projects and Rita was hoping Donna would get involved in this one too.  Rita began by asking Donna if she would be willing to take just a few calls on her cell phone and answer a few emails for her.   Donna thought, “How hard could this be?  How many emails could Rita get without a computer and email address?

Rita was thrilled as she watched Donna recognize the potential of the program and display as much enthusiasm for it as she had. However, Donna saw the limitations of Rita teaching one student or one class at a time.  To make this innovative method of teaching keyboarding available to a wide audience, Donna knew they had to digitize the process and develop a stand-alone, interactive software product to market to schools and home market.

So, together Rita and Donna adapted Mrs. Gallagher’s original curriculum for a live puppet show. They chose a ragtime music theme and wrote lyrics to two songs. Imbedded in the script are mind memory techniques that accelerate the learning process. Humor and good values are sprinkled throughout the stories.  Before they knew it, they were auditioning puppeteers to work the 30 puppets, and were hiring a production company.  The girls laughed as they were reminded of the old Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland movies that always had the line, “Let’s put on a show!” And Herman and Katz have produced one heck of a first-rate show!

After months of work Keyboard Town PALS had a script and their creative team in place.  They chose professionals with years of experience in children’s educational programming. Several members of the crew were part of the Emmy-Award winning staff of Mister Rogers‘Neighborhood.

• The most famous artist, Jeff Bergman, is the voice of 18 puppets in the Keyboard Town PALS production. Adults will recognize the famous voices of Woody Allen, JFK, William F. Buckley, Goucho Marx, Soprano’s and more. Bergman is best known as the voices of the classic Warner Brothers’ Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbera characters. He provides voice work for the Fox show, The Family Guy. His level of expertise and talent greatly increased the entertainment value of our program.
• Adrienne Wehr was co-producer of Keyboard Town PALS and was associate producer on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood for ten years and is an accomplished actor and producer.  She most recently appeared in the hit movie, UNSTOPPABLE with Denzel Washington.
• Mark Knobil, Director of Photography of Keyboard Town PALS, started his career at Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and is now a favorite choice of National Geographic, Nova, and PBS.
• Leah Blackwood, Keyboard Town PALS scenic artist, painted Mister Rogers‘ sets for over a decade.
• Melissa Martin, Keyboard Town PALS director, is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Drama, teaching screenwriting as well as directing feature films.
• Batpack Studio’s state-of-the-art facility and its professional staff made the Keyboard Town PALS production process run smoothly.
• John Friedman, who designed and constructed Keyboard Town’s 22’ set, is presently designing and building sets for Pittsburgh City Theater.

Keyboard Town PALS went from being a teacher directed lesson, taught only by Rita, to a high definition professional video being taught today in schools and homes worldwide.

NYC schools can use government NYSSL funding to purchase the Keyboard Town PALS products listed in the SHOPDOE catalog.

The New American Academy, P.S. 770, an experimental school in Brooklyn and model for future NYC schools, chose the Keyboard Town PALS products for kindergarten and first grade children. Shimon Waronker, the principal, believes keyboarding to be a necessary skill.  He said, “This program does it quickly, easily and without mindless, endless drills.  The added component of introducing reading readiness skills such as letter recognition and spelling made Keyboard Town PALS irresistible.  I really liked that the keyboarding instruction comes in Spanish and French. How wonderful for the heritage speaking child”!

Keyboard Town PALS has come a long way from that day in Rita’s basement.  She never dreamed it would lead to building sets, translating scripts into foreign languages and producing a values-based program.

Yes, the company has gone way beyond the parameters of teaching keyboarding. It is now ready to launch its newest school based program called is LET’S LEAD. The puppets this time face new challenges that test their strength of character.  Rita and Donna claim that LET’S LEAD encourages students to consider multiple solutions to everyday situations, to voice their opinions publicly, to take into consideration the opinions and needs of others, to internalize commonly shared values, and to build inner confidence.

On occasion, Rita can be found talking on her cell phone about “thumb drives” and “delivery platforms”. And don’t for a minute think that Rita and Donna don’t have another major project coming down the pike.  But that’s for another story.

 

View our interview at Columbia University: