How can I stop myself from looking down at the keyboard?
Hi Pierce,
It’s tempting, I understand. You can only be sure you’re typing the right letters if you look directly at them! However, touch typing is supposed to eliminate the need to look down. Challenge yourself by refusing to look at the keyboard until you’ve finished typing a paragraph. You can orient yourself by placing your index fingers on the F and J keys, which have little bumps on them to help you find your place.
Best Regards,
Aidan Bernales
Community Moderator at Typesy
Hello, @pierceosullivan!
Our brains are designed to automatically fix easy problems without us having to consciously think about them - for example, when your brain realizes you’re struggling to remember the placement of a key, it will “fix” this problem by moving your eyes to look. Even if you’re doing everything you can to actively avoid looking, your brain has been taught to help out! 
A vast majority of the time, the nature of how our brains work is a good thing. When trying to learn how to touch type, not so much…
You can start by getting yourself a keyboard cover. That way, even though your eyes might slip onto the keyboard, it won’t help anyway. If you don’t have ready access to a keyboard cover, you can also try blindfolding yourself. This makes it a bit more difficult as it really relies on your ability to know the layout of the keys. If you try it this way, I’m sure you’ll become very familiar with the F and J keys. Those are the two keys that will often have raised ridges. These markers indicate where the index fingers should be placed on the home row, so you can feel your way back to home row rather than needing to look at the keyboard directly.
And always remember - it’s totally normal to be VERY challenged by this process! Committing a skill to muscle memory is no easy task, so stick with it!
Regards,
Alex (The Reimagined Classroom Teacher)