On Fridays this fall, Marion Gommerman, 82, will be sitting in a Toronto classroom along with other university students young enough to be their grandchildren.
It is a trip that began with a seed planted a year ago when it participated in the class with other residents of its assisted life facilities in Toronto.
Delando of the friendships he made and hungry to know more, the course made her think of returning to the studies that had begun decades before. Then he saw a grandson crossing the stage in the call, and thought he would have to use a walker or cane if he was in his place.
Now, it is registered for credit as a student at the University of Toronto. His first course explores the health and populations of aging of Canada.
“If I didn’t take [the] Opportunity, I would be wasted, “Gommerman said.
“It’s not to get the role … It’s just feeling that I could achieve it and try it.”
Canadians do not always have opportunities to connect deeply with people in other age supports, but some who are learning one next to the other describe it as an energizing and enlightening experience that benefits everyone.
An immersive university course organized within an assisted life center is encouraging the elderly and students to learn from each other.
Get out of a ‘social recession’
Raza Mirza has taught the health and aging course of Gommerman in approximately a decade and has made adjustments over time.
He began inviting the elderly for visits in the class, that everyone enjoyed, according to the Assistant Social Work Professor at the University of Toronto. While the elderly were not taking the course at that time, they often stayed to listen, for example, to the conferences “about the risk factors of dementia or social isolation or retirement planning.”
His idea of organizing classes in a house of local older people led to even more positive and energizing interactions. This fall is its third edition of that immersive and intergenerational classroom, a learning model that appears in other Canadian schools as well.
It helps young and old participants to build friendships and new connections after the “social recession” of pandemic, Mirza said, and discover common land while also getting involved with different perspectives.
Put in parentheses to each other to create tension and feed ageism, believe Mirza and expect participants beyond stereotypes.
“He will listen to things in the news saying that ‘older adults are using more health resources’ [or] ‘Boomers need to sell their houses; Unless they do, younger people cannot enter the real estate market, ‘”he said.
“What we hope to do in this classroom is to build a little more generational solidarity by gathering people to have some of these conversations.”
Richer experience, students say
The fourth year student, Carolina Galhardo, already does an extensive voluntary work with older people under care out of school, but is excited by a more formal learning in the Mirza class.
“Interacting with the elderly of the course and learning through their experiences directly, I think it will be super valuable,” said Galhardo, who studies biology, immunology and physiology. “Everyone will age and become older adults in the community … it is very pertinent.”
The first year music student, Sam Griffin, on being a first -year student at the University of Toronto while his grandmother, Marion Gommerman.
For Octogenarian Gommerman, returning to school is very sweet since he joins another grandson, Sam Griffin, who has just begun to study the jazz performance, also at the University of Toronto.
Griffin recalled a decisive moment years ago when, at one point he was obsessed with the rockers of the 80s, the Smiths, his grandfather directed him towards the leader of the Jazz band, Duke Ellington.
She thinks that her grandmother could inspire in a similar way to the youngest classmates with unexpected views and ideas, which caused “a deeper understanding of the material of the course, which is obviously a good thing, but also a much richer experience,” said the 18 -year -old.
“You also end up coming out of that learning with [a perspective] You didn’t know before. And if the university is a thing at all, it is about learning. “
Marion Gommerman returns to class in Toronto this fall, with the aim of finishing post -secondary studies that began decades ago.
