Working With Wise Owls - My Experience Teaching Seniors

So you've taught the youngsters, but what about the other side of that artistic rainbow? I'm talking about senior citizens! In this collective I will be touching on some of the things that I learned while teaching senior citizens.

In August 2017 I found that one of my assigned recreation sites to teach art had a large population of senior citizens. The recreation center happily shared a space with a center that catered only to the "wise owls" and offered various activities at low or no cost to them. One thing they were missing though - was an art program. I thought to myself that this could be a new and challenging chapter of my artistic career and gleefully began creating a lesson plan for my first ever senior painting class. Be forewarned - it wasn't a bed of roses to create a new concept from teaching children to - not just adults - but mature adults who have a lot more life experience than me. That was one of the intimidating thoughts that I had while creating my fall schedule.

The time came and the word was out about my senior watercolor class. The very first day I only had about 5 students show up. I was a little disheartened - but I was just happy that anyone showed up at all. One hurdle of mine was that one of my students was hard of hearing but very good at reading lips. I wanted to make sure that I could instruct her as well as the others. Eventually I started giving written instructions to everyone so that it made it easier for her and the whole class to know what was planned for that day. I also noticed that mobility with some of them were limited so I learned that I should make sure to set out the paints and brushes for them so they wouldn't have to move around so much.

I began to notice something after a while - that my class was growing and growing! The girls (who I eventually started calling my senior group because it so happened they were all women) started to get the word out about their fun, new painting class. And because of this, began to open up a whole new group of not only artists - but friends.

The girls started to open up to each other. Some times it would be about their weekend, their life experiences, likes, dislikes and their grandchildren. I watched this beautiful bond from all of us slowly blossom. There was a level of trust and respect that began to form. It became less about the art and more about the good company.

The women whom I had the pleasure to teach probably taught me more than I was able to teach them. They were kind and courteous, they would help clean up and stay after class to chat. They'd bring me nice food and gifts. My mother-in-law also frequented the class and would talk about how the girls would rant and rave about me and my class. I knew going in to that classroom that it would be rewarding but never in my wildest dreams did I think about how much each and every one of those strong women would influence me for the rest of my life.