Home
Kids Ask Seniors: What Was It Like?
LIVINGSTON, NJ (January 22, 2004) - Trinity Covenant Church elementary school
children learned about their neighbors by spending time interviewing area
senior adults on Martin Luther King Jr. Day this past Monday.
Susan Gillespie, associate pastor for Youth and Family Ministry at Trinity
Covenant, said children ages 5-11 were involved in a series of "oral
history" interviews with six senior adults at Cedar Street Commons, a
senior housing complex near the church. The event - "Learning From and
Lending a Hand to Our Seniors" - was designed to connect community
organizations with seniors living in town.
According to Gillespie, the interviewers learned about how hard children
worked decades ago, as the senior adults told them they used to peddle all
sorts of items door to door (among other things) to earn money. The seniors
come from different demographic backgrounds as reflected in the varied
memories they shared. The Trinity children learned that the seniors enjoyed
a snowy day as much 70 years ago as the kids do
today. And, through drawing timelines of the era during which the senior
adults lived, the kids learned that a 95-year-old resident was almost as
old as the New York Yankees professional baseball franchise, which began in
1903.
Gillespie said she has already discovered two positive things that
developed out of the interviews: seniors discovered that they enjoyed
sharing their memories with the children and vowed to continue the
conversations at a later date, and the editor of the West Essex
Tribune, the local newspaper, discovered what the children were
planning to do
and applauded the efforts in a January 15 editorial.
"Recognizing that elders like to tell their stories, and that children
don't always have an opportunity to get to know older people, we thought it
might bless our community if we could find a way to bring the two age
groups together," Gillespie said of why the church decided to interview
their neighbors. She added that questions pertained to "everything from
chores and homework when the seniors were children to whether or not they
got into trouble in school or what made them scared when they were little."
Gillespie and Cyndy Traverso, the mother of one of the children
participating in the interviews, are compiling a report on the project. For
more information about the church and Monday's interviews, contact
Gillespie by telephone at 973-635-3459 or by email at
sgillesp@optonline.net.
Copyright © 2008 The Evangelical Covenant Church. |
