I had great fun last week with a U3A group in a rural town. It was quite inspiring to work with these elderly nimble minds. It was a three hour session about the debate on climate change. Their questions kept me on my toes and I had to be inventive with activities that could accommodate their not-so-quite nimble bodies. It reminded how flexible we need to be as facilitators. Here's another story from a session I ran quite a few years ago.
A friend once asked me if I would run an assertiveness session for her client group...some blind people(she said)...of course I was happy to(I said)....well actually they are quite elderly too(she said)....ok that's no problem (I said).....that's great but some of them are deaf as well(she said).....O h k a y then I guess I can do that(I said)....don't worry we have someone to sign for you(she said)....(Now how you sign to a blind person I wasn’t quite sure but ....I am sure we can work something out(I said).....Great, now one last thing, quite a few of them have Alzheimer’s(she said)......Right, well it will be interesting then. (I said)
Well as it happened it was one of the more delightful sessions I have run and the group renamed the session, 'Querulous Training.' They had wanted the Assertiveness Training primarily because when they went to the Doctor, they felt that the Doctors generally treated them as stupid, didn’t bother to explain things and prescribed medication without providing information. So as a group they ended up coaching each other on shaking or stamping their white cane at the ‘Quack’....if they were going to be treated as stupid, then they decided they may as well ham it up and get fractious and querulous and insist that the young whippersnapper give them their due. The session was a great success and a fabulous learning experience for yours truly. I was told a few years later that they are still shaking their canes!
