(UNCRC – Article 29 – Education must develop every child’s personality, talents and abilities to the full……it must encourage respect for their parents, cultures and environment)
From the beginning of September to November, we, as a class as well as the charity group, Silver City Surfers, team have been working together on an Inter-Generational project to help our perceptions of ‘old’ and to help elders with technology.
Primary 7 classes at Ferryhill worked together along with the Silver Surfers team on the Inter-Generational project, which took place in Ferryhill School, Whinhill Residential Home and Ferryhill Community Centre.
We started off in our class, talking about ‘what age is old?’ where we discussed what age we all thought was ‘old’. We then went to Whinhill Retirement Home and introduced ourselves to the residents, and we were given
the task to get to know one another, by writing down facts about ourselves in our hand prints on a piece of paper. We then had to learn facts about our partner.
After that, we got a volunteer named Kenny, to come in and talk to us about music from different times. He brought in an old record player and showed us how it worked. Kenny played us music from the 1940s, since our current topic is WW2.
After our session with Kenny, we went to Whinhill every 2 weeks, and we would teach the elders to use and be more confident with technology.
One week college hairdressing and make-up students from NESCOL came to school, we got our hair and makeup done in the style of the 1940’s. We then went for our visit to Whinhill residential home and set up a photo booth where we got our pictures taken with some of the residents.
Referring to the CRC article 29, I feel that my skills in tutoring have definitely developed throughout this project, because we had the opportunity every other week, to teach and to also learn.
In terms of the SHANARRI wheel, or wellbeing wheel, we covered Achieving, Respected, Responsible and Included; Achieving: I felt I achieved a lot during this project because it was a big project and I feel we did very well.
Respected: I felt I was much respected because when I was teaching, I was listened to and I do really feel like I helped make a difference.
Responsible: I felt very responsible because we were given a great opportunity, and that we did make a difference for the residents of Whinhill and that we taught them by ourselves.
Included: I felt included because I was always doing something and the team always made sure everyone was getting involved.
Overall, I thought this project was amazing! I would definitely encourage people to do it. I feel like I’ve learned a lot and everything we did was so much fun! I’m very glad we did it and my perception of ‘old’ has definitely changed. I now see elders as people and not as an age.
