Janice’s Jots: Students, seniors interact
Interaction between generations can be beneficial to young and old alike. The word “intergenerational” could not be found in my desk dictionary, but seems self-explanatory while being used more frequently the last few years to describe the coming together of people from different generations.
When a group of students from Centertown School made a recent visit to the Senior Center, several attendees experienced a turn-around in regard to their preconceived notions concerning Senior Center activities specifically and senior adults in general.
Prior to the field trip, some wrote paragraphs entitled, “What the Senior Center really is.” Others expressed their opinion of the center following the visit. Here’s what they had to say:
I think a Senior Center is somewhere that senior citizens go to have fun and play games with other people their age. I think it’s a good place for them to go and enjoy their time with people they know. This way they don’t have to be alone and they can be happy socializing with people.
– Mary Katherine
Before: I think a Senior Center should be a respected place. I think this is so because that is where some of the senior citizens in our county are. I think it is great there is a place where seniors can be with their friends and still have the care they need.
After: It turned out that what my idea of a senior center was wrong. I didn’t expect all the fun and liveliness that the seniors show. It turned out to be a place where the seniors can go and eat and play games and fellowship with each other.
– Matt Cowan
It is a place where elderly people can go and have fun. They play Bingo, puzzles, quilt, play pool and make flags out of beads and safety pins. It is really a cool place to go and hang out with people that really enjoy having your company. I hope that I can go back in the summer to see some of the people I met while I was there, and more.
-Kendra Bailey
A senior center is a place where the elderly people go to play games, sew and hang out with their friends. They play pool, cards and everything. The senior center is actually like our skating rink where we hang out.
– Megan Bain
It’s not where people lay up in bed all day and other people take care of them. That’s what I thought it was. Now I know it’s where seniors just “hang out.” The seniors go there and play games, meet other seniors, eat and just have a lot of fun.
– Shea
The Senior Center is a place where elders get good care and nursing. They play Bingo and have a lot of activities there. The people that work there sometimes have two jobs inside the Senior Center and as homemakers where they go to the elder’s house and clean their house. Some other people deliver medicine to the elders who need medicine. The workers have to go to the office and see what has to be done. They have a lot of paper work to finish.
– Gabrielle
I think a Senior Citizen place is where older people go to talk, play and live, feed animals and fish, play Bingo. Also I think they don’t make a decision to go themselves.
– Matthew Johnson
I think a senior center is a place where old people stay at, because they don’t have anybody to take care of them. They go to a senior center and play games and probably make friends. A senior center is kinda like a home for the elderly people. If their husband or wife died, and they felt lonely, then they could go there and not be lonely anymore.
– Maria George
Senior Center – I think it is a place where old people go to play Bingo and to eat and listen to music and play pool. And dance, swim, run, play, roller-blade, roller-skate, feed the ducks and go fishing.
– A.J. Parker
The Senior Center is for the old folks to relax. They go there to met people, talk, have fun, shoot pool, eat, sing and work out.
-Chris D.