Carol:
When I was teaching, I would sometimes head to the Food Court on Friday mornings when a lot of OLLI students would meet for lunch. A few traditional aged students might be studying over coffee or grabbing a quick meal before soccer practice, but the room would be dominated by much larger groups of older folks involved in loud, animated conversations. They were clearly having fun.
The notion of “lifelong learning” recognizes that a person’s life journey is not linear or lock-step, that continuous education can meet a variety of needs whatever a person’s age. Click on “Lifelong Learning” at our College and you will find not just OLLI but community education classes for all ages, including “College for Kids”, the Center for Successful Aging, and EDventures, which offers “Journeys of the Mind and Body” through organized educational field trips (source: YC Lifelong Learning Division).
The OLLI group at Yavapai College is one of a network of 117 Lifelong Learning Institutes around the United States supported by the Bernard Osher Foundation, whose mission is to support higher education and the arts, including “meeting the needs of older learners who want to learn simply for the joy of learning and personal fulfillment” (source: OLLI National Resource Center). The various Institutes are meant to reflect the culture of their own communities, so the “flavor” of the different OLLI groups may differ significantly although the common thread is self-directed, collaborative learning communities. We might almost think of them as learning co-ops where members pay a fee to not only participate as students but contribute to decisions what classes and special interest groups are offered, fees, newsletter, etc. I notice from the newsletter that OLLI refers to itself as a Knowledge Exchange.
I have taken plenty of courses at the College and appreciate the classes in religion, technology and ecology for reshaping some of my most important attitudes and habits in the past 5 years. So, I wasn’t sure I was ready to make the shift from the structure and multi-generational atmosphere of a conventional college classroom to a program geared for SENIORS. Let’s face it, America is not kind, respectful, or enthusiastic about the notion of aging. We compliment people by saying, “You don’t look your age.” We label people by the work they do and joke about “being put out to pasture” at retirement.
If that first OLLI session is typical, I would almost say that I have entered an educational Utopia. Fifteen minutes before the 1 p.m. start-up, the room was almost full, and it was noisy. People clearly were anxious for the two-hour session to get started, and when it was over, they lingered to converse and ask questions. The model of an “idea exchange” was reinforced by the two facilitators, both retired, seasoned teachers, neither of whom presented themselves as subject-matter experts but rather as fellow learners. The class is advertised as “no homework, no tests,” but most people had purchased the optional text, most were taking notes, and most had lots of questions and comments. I didn’t hear a single groan when we were asked to turn to a neighbor and share ideas for 5 minutes. Imagine, a roomful of students who were there by choice, loved to learn, and had the life experiences to wrap new ideas and opinions around.
I wanted to end this essay with a catchy quote about aging… but most of the quotes just reinforce all the old opinions about wrinkles, memory loss, and pill consumption. I have a busy day planned, and I’m looking forward to an afternoon of fun escapism at the movies. So, I’ll let my daughter finish the essay instead…. Cartoon, please.
Teaching Old Dogs
Last week I went to my first OLLI class, part of a series on Mythology and the Human Experience. The Osher Life-long Learning Institute is a peer- facilitated program for “seniors” around the idea of learning groups. Some of the classes (and facilitators) are so popular that lotteries determine who will get into the class. Although the Institute is housed at the College, it is overseen by an independent Governing Council. Sounds dry and dull when described this way, but OLLI is anything but.When I was teaching, I would sometimes head to the Food Court on Friday mornings when a lot of OLLI students would meet for lunch. A few traditional aged students might be studying over coffee or grabbing a quick meal before soccer practice, but the room would be dominated by much larger groups of older folks involved in loud, animated conversations. They were clearly having fun.
The notion of “lifelong learning” recognizes that a person’s life journey is not linear or lock-step, that continuous education can meet a variety of needs whatever a person’s age. Click on “Lifelong Learning” at our College and you will find not just OLLI but community education classes for all ages, including “College for Kids”, the Center for Successful Aging, and EDventures, which offers “Journeys of the Mind and Body” through organized educational field trips (source: YC Lifelong Learning Division).
The OLLI group at Yavapai College is one of a network of 117 Lifelong Learning Institutes around the United States supported by the Bernard Osher Foundation, whose mission is to support higher education and the arts, including “meeting the needs of older learners who want to learn simply for the joy of learning and personal fulfillment” (source: OLLI National Resource Center). The various Institutes are meant to reflect the culture of their own communities, so the “flavor” of the different OLLI groups may differ significantly although the common thread is self-directed, collaborative learning communities. We might almost think of them as learning co-ops where members pay a fee to not only participate as students but contribute to decisions what classes and special interest groups are offered, fees, newsletter, etc. I notice from the newsletter that OLLI refers to itself as a Knowledge Exchange.
I have taken plenty of courses at the College and appreciate the classes in religion, technology and ecology for reshaping some of my most important attitudes and habits in the past 5 years. So, I wasn’t sure I was ready to make the shift from the structure and multi-generational atmosphere of a conventional college classroom to a program geared for SENIORS. Let’s face it, America is not kind, respectful, or enthusiastic about the notion of aging. We compliment people by saying, “You don’t look your age.” We label people by the work they do and joke about “being put out to pasture” at retirement.
If that first OLLI session is typical, I would almost say that I have entered an educational Utopia. Fifteen minutes before the 1 p.m. start-up, the room was almost full, and it was noisy. People clearly were anxious for the two-hour session to get started, and when it was over, they lingered to converse and ask questions. The model of an “idea exchange” was reinforced by the two facilitators, both retired, seasoned teachers, neither of whom presented themselves as subject-matter experts but rather as fellow learners. The class is advertised as “no homework, no tests,” but most people had purchased the optional text, most were taking notes, and most had lots of questions and comments. I didn’t hear a single groan when we were asked to turn to a neighbor and share ideas for 5 minutes. Imagine, a roomful of students who were there by choice, loved to learn, and had the life experiences to wrap new ideas and opinions around.
I wanted to end this essay with a catchy quote about aging… but most of the quotes just reinforce all the old opinions about wrinkles, memory loss, and pill consumption. I have a busy day planned, and I’m looking forward to an afternoon of fun escapism at the movies. So, I’ll let my daughter finish the essay instead…. Cartoon, please.
Megan:
The Only Democrat in the Village
The first presidential election I can remember was the 1988 Bush/Dukakis race. At 7 years old, I proudly declared myself the only Democrat in my class and drew cartoons of a donkey giving an elephant a black eye. My most vocal opponents were twin boys, the sons of a local political aspirant who lived near my neighborhood. These boys regularly rolled the window down to yell at passing Prescott College students to “take a shower you stupid hippie.” My cousin (the one with the chickens) eventually attended that college, as did her future husband. Despite the fact that we had such different world views, they were my classmates who lived the nearest, and I spent a lot of time with them (our political differences didn’t seem to get in the way of our friendship).
By the time I reached 8th grade, Bill Clinton was in office, but I was still the only Democrat in the class. The twins had changed schools, but my liberal leanings earned me constant bullying by my classmates. I admit I could be obnoxious, threatening sexual harassment lawsuits at boys who peeked under girls’ skirts, but didn’t think to follow through when the harassment became legitimate – when my classmates called me a lesbian, when my best friend put distance between us out of fear of the same accusation levied at her.
In high school, I was in a class of 400 instead of 11, and was comfortably invisible most of the time. Political leanings on both sides shifted into apathy, and despite the fact that I became much more involved in the Catholic Church, even going as far as picketing Planned Parenthood, I think I still (guiltily) considered myself a pro-choice liberal.
In college, in Oakland CA, I felt I’d finally found “my people.” I met actual lesbians, and discovered communists and anarchists, people so far to my left they were practically on the right. Now a part of the majority, I discovered I had no taste for political rallies or protests. I could hold a sign, but I could not shout, I could not even chant. I felt stupid and sheep-like, even though I believed in the cause and admired my politically active friends. I registered Green but voted Democrat at the last second, and along with everyone else I knew, believed Bush stole that first election.
I spent most of Bush’s terms in England, where I was the token “good American, “ the exception noted whenever anyone wanted to trash America and its bullying foreign policy. “Not you,” they would say, “you’re okay.” When I decided to return to the States, I joked with friends that Obama was the reason I was returning to the States, “now that it was safe.” As I get older I realize more that being president is just a really hard job, that promises about change are made to win elections, but that there’s not a lot of difference between the main parties.
I’ve gotten to know my childhood friends again. Some have outgrown their parents’ political leanings, and some have not (including me). One of my very best friends is a self-avowed “gun-toting conservative” who complains regularly about the unwashed. Part of me thinks she does it to embarrass me, part of me knows she believes it. But I love her anyway. And the twins? We met again after 10 years, their Republican father still heavily involved in Arizona politics, and the boys are more liberal than I ever was as a kid.
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| Re-creation of 1988 drawing |
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