Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Service Learning Is The Great Connector, Jane Angelis

Service Learning, General

It isn't a coincidence that older people are flocking to learn about computers, the Internet, and E-mail. It's a part of the service-learning movement that has caught America's imagination. Why are older people, technology and service learning such natural partners? Ask a middle-school student who is teaching a computer class to older people. "Some senior citizens are afraid of computers in the beginning," he says, "But we know how to make them more comfortable." That confidence is the hallmark of service-learning programs across the country involving elementary, middle school, high school, and college campuses. William Butler Yeats wrote that ':Education …

Invlving Older Adults In Schools, Jane Angelis, Lisa Wathen

Intergenerational

Older adults possess what many young people lack: history, patience, and a deep knowledge of the human struggle. At a time when flexibility and the ability to change are essential skills for entry into the economy, senior citizens can show the way. They were born, after all, before television, jet planes, and communications satellites. And in an age in which mobility, poverty, and other forces have severed family ties, older adults are a living link with the past. With all the benefits that can accrue from involving older people in our schools, it would seem to make sense that' this …

Students Help In The Naturalization Of Elders, Nina Gibson

Intergenerational

Many of our elderly citizenship students are struggling to get ready to take the naturalization exam. To help these learners, a collaborative effort between City College and San Francisco State University called Project SHINE began last fall and has doubled in size this semester. Credit students from the Phelan campus and from San Francisco State University are coming out to our campuses to tutor seniors studying in our citizenship classes. The tutors receive credit in an academic class for their work as part of service learning. They have agreed to attend one citizenship class per week under the supervision of …

Intergenerational Service-Learning, Illinois Intergenerational Initiative

Intergenerational

A retired secretary assists with a high-school business class. When she suffers a stroke the students visit, encourage, and help her through rehabilitation --Intergenerational Service-Learning Members of a fraternity help senior citizens relocate to their new facility. The following semester senior citizens mentor freshman students who are overwhelmed by the university experience --Intergenerational Service-Learning.

An older couple visits a preschool to read and tell stories to the children. Three years later when one of them loses sight, the students take turns reading to them--proudly demonstrating their new skills --Intergenerational Service-Learning.

Retirees visit a Youth Center to …

Community Service To The Elderly A Service-Learning Model: Guidelines For Replication, James M. Mccrea, Sherry G. Cottom

Curriculum

At the University of Pittsburgh, Generations Together, an Intergenerational Studies Program develops programs that bring young and old together in ways that benefit both generations. The University Challenge for Excellence Program (DCEP) works with entering students who are often first generation, mostly African-American, and who may be in need of special assistance during their first year. UCEP seeks ways to raise their self esteem, give them a sense of purpose, connect them to the University, and ultimately to retain them at Pitt through graduation. In 1994, these two university programs joined together with the Housing Authority of the City of …

Senior Center In Seattle Applauds Service-Learning, Nola L. Freeman

Intergenerational

In the fall of 1992, the Pike Market Senior Center, an urban gathering place for a widely diverse community of low income elders, joined 30 other sites in the Seattle area in accepting an invitation from the Carlson Leadership and Public Service Office at the University of Washington. In accepting this invitation, these sites agreed to help the office accomplish the following mission: "To promote, support, and organize opportunities for undergraduates to become involved in effective public service, helping them to mature in their understanding of complex social, philosophical, economic, and political issues, and instilling in them a life-long commitment …

Elder Mentors: Giving Schools A Hand, Marc Freedman, Natalie Jaffe

Intergenerational

Mentoring is threatening to become a buzzword without meaning. We hear about mentoring for principals, for teachers, for students, for employees in a wide range of businesses and industry. There is mentoring by principals, by teachers, by students, by corporate executives, by members of the community. There is mentoring designed to help adult "mentees" (an ungraceful word) be better administrators, teachers, practitioners, or employees; to help youth adjust to society after incarceration or institutionalization; to do better in school, take good care of their children, not get pregnant in the first place, stay out of jail; stop taking drugs-and on …

Evaluation Of An Intergenerational Service-Learning Project For Undergraduates, Robert G. Bringle, John F. Kremer

Intergenerational

An appropriate objective within a liberal arts approach to education is enhancing students' awareness of attitudes toward their own aging. A combined intervention of intergenerational experience and didactic instruction had a favorable effect on students' attitudes toward older adults i11 general and on students' uie'w of their own later lives. Additional positive consequences are discussed, and suggestions for running similar curricular components are presented.

Involving Older Volunteers, In Public Schools, Kristen J. Amundson

Intergenerational

Each day, 5,000 Americans celebrate their sixty-fifth birthday. As this age group becomes larger, it will also become more powerful. As voters, seniors make up the most conscientious of the voting group in our society.

Bringing Old And Young Together, Jane Angelis

Intergenerational

"I just can't get it all done!" It is the classic lament of the teacher stretched too thin by the demands of the classroom. Imagine what educators could accomplish if we only had enough help...

Intergenerational Programs: A Manual For Success, Ramona Frischman

Intergenerational

Although there are always social issues which much be faced by educators and by society, three issues in particular demand attention in the 1990s. Racism, sexism, and a third "ism" - one relatively new to our vocabulary - ageism. Referring to the discrimination against a group or an individual because of age, ageism is most often practiced against members of two distinct groups in our society: those over 60, and those under the ago of 18.

Fostering Intergenerational Relatiollships For At-Risk Youth, Marc Freedman

Intergenerational

Many at-risk youth are growing up isolated from the range of caring and consistent adult relationships so important for navigating the treacherous course from adolescence to adulthood. An accumulation of research from the social sciences suggests that adult relationships-provided not only by parents. but by grandparents, neighbors and other interested elders-are a common factor among resilient children, who achieve success despite growing up under disadvantaged and stressful circumstances. An important. and not often addressed, question for social programs and policy is whether the circumstances of more at-risk youth could be improved through efforts designed to provide greater access to helping …

Intergenerational Service Programs: Meeting Shared Needs Of Young And Old, Debra L. Cherry, Frank R. Benest, Barbara Gates, Joanne White

Special Topics, General

This society's adolescent and elderly populations share many needs and characteristics. Both often have little access to meaningful social roles. For example, neither is likely to be fully integrated into the work force and, consequently, both groups tend to have high rates of unemployment (Pearl, 1978; Sheppard, 1976). Moreover, their family roles tend to be in transition. Teenagers are ·in the process of gaining independence from their parents while many older adults face changes such as the loss of a spouse or decreased family power relative to their middle-aged children. The lack of meaningful social roles has been blamed for …

Intergenerational Service-Learning: Contributions To Curricula, James P. Firman, Donald E. Gelfand, Catherine Ventura

Intergenerational

This article reports some findings from a national demonstration project involving the National Council on the Aging (NCOA) and thirteen colleges and universities. We studied 39 courses in which students were involved in service-learning in aging. We describe and discuss (1) the range of demonstrably feasible 'adoptions, (2) what faculty say their students learned from the experiences, and (3) faculty perceptions of personal benefits and costs associated with developing and directing these projects.

Students As Resources To The Aging Network, James P. Firman, Donlad E. Gelfand, Catherine Ventura

Intergenerational

In times of shrinking resources and growing needs, the aging network must increase its efforts to involve the voluntary sector in services and programs for the aged. A relatively untapped source of manpower is our nation's 12,300,000 students in 3,200 colleges and universities. This article, based on the findings of a national demonstration project, examines feasible outcomes and practical limitations of service-learning as an approach for increasing the involvement of students in providing services to older persons.

Developing And Implementing Service-Learning In Aging, Donald E. Gelfand, James P. Firman

Intergenerational

This article focuses on the potential benefits of service-learning in aging to students, the university, and the community. We first discuss the concept of service-learning, clarify its parameters, and describe the types of projects that best exemplify its unique blend of service and learning. Opportunities for service-learning are examined using examples from the current Intergenerational Service-Learning Project of the National Council on Aging. The complexity of' initiating and gaining acceptance of service-learning in aging projects is explored, with particular attention given to supervisory and curriculum issues. Finally, the national implications of' service-learning in aging are discussed, as well as the …

Intergenerational School Projects: Examples And Guidelines, James P. Firman, Anita M. Stowell

Intergenerational

The residential, educational, and recreational patterns of modern American society tend to isolate the young from the old. Because there is little interaction between the age groups, each generation tends to stereotype the other. Educators must realize that these age-related stereotypes affect our interpersonal relationships, our self-images, and, consequently, our potential to live a full, rewarding life.