In celebration of Court Reporting and Captioning Week, I went to San Marcos High School’s Criminal Justice classes on Friday (six classes) and introduced the profession of court reporting to the students.  Many high school students have never thought about court reporting as a career and really only know what they see on television – an incorrect portrayal of an old lady with paper notes.  I began each class by writing students’ conversations as they came into the class with my computer hooked up to the teacher’s monitor that displayed the screen onto the huge whiteboard in front of the class.

The students were able to see my CAT software screen with the real-time, the steno, the word count, the words-per-minute counter, and how many strokes I had hit on my machine that morning.  I told my story of how I first learned about court reporting in high school from my typing teacher, how I quit college after my freshman year to go to court reporting school, and have had the best career ever.

In the last 10 minutes of the period, students were invited up to write on the steno machine.  I showed them how to write their names in steno, or programmed a few easy key outlines to be their name.  I could see the lightbulb go off when they understood the keystroke becoming an English word.

All of the students were invited to go to www.projectsteno.org for more information about how to become a court reporter, or just email me.  It was a long day, but deeply satisfying!