Every Wednesday afternoon after school a group of Riverside-Brookfield High School students get together with some friends for an hour or so of fun, games and social interaction.
It just so happens that these particular friends are as much as five or even six times older than the RB students. They are residents of the British Home, an elder center in Brookfield. But the age span doesn’t seem to matter when the students and the residents get together.
“It’s a lot of fun,” said RB junior Libby Bova, the 17-year-old student who organizes the visits. “It seems strange, but the generation gap isn’t as hard to bridge as people think.”
Bova is the president of RB’s Association for Student Tolerance (AST) club which coordinates the visits to the British Home. But Bova makes sure to get more than just AST members involved.
Each week Bova tries to get a different group of RB students to visit and present an activity. One week it could be members of the RB speech team doing part of their competition performance for the residents. Another week it might be the RB photography club sharing photos. Sometimes it is just members of AST and other students who come along to get in on the fun.
Spelling bees are popular with the British Home residents. They went to school before the age of spell check, when spelling was a valued skill emphasized in school. Sometimes the students compete against residents. Other times some students and residents will be on the same team competing against another mixed group.
The seniors enjoy matching wits with the students.
“Our seniors are very competitive,” said Stephanie Donaghey, the British Home’s activities director
Other favorite activities include trivia quizzes, geography questions and discussions of political issues or events in the news.
“It is just a really nice intergenerational interaction with the residents,” said Donaghey.
On a recent Wednesday afternoon the a group of 16, including six students, RB teacher Cara Gallagher and nine residents played charades in an activity room in the Woodlands assisted living building on the British Home campus. It was mostly students doing the pantomime with other students and residents frantically trying to guess what the person was acting out.
Once in a while the generation gap does show.
A student was mimicking typing. A resident called out “typewriter,” but the answer the student was looking for was computer.
Millie Mihalik, a 93-year-old former resident of North Riverside who has lived at the British Home for just under two years always looks forward to the Wednesday visits by the students.
“They’re very friendly,” said Mihalik. “They always come with something. I enjoy these kids. We know each other. They call us by our names; we call them by their names.”
Mihalik says she certainly notices some differences in the today’s teenagers compared to teenagers back in her teenage years.
“It’s wonderful, but it’s so different,” said Mihalik. “The way we were brought up and the way they are. The way they dress. We got dressed up to go to high school.”
But both residents and students agree that their similarities outweigh the differences.
“I think it’s been kind of been cool, just as an experience, to sort of break down some of the stereotypes that come with assuming that if someone is older than you then they’ll probably be more conservative, they probably dislike teenagers, and would probably yell at you if you walk across their lawn,” said Bova. “It just sort of gives us a window of opportunity to see, or I guess, to interact with people we normally wouldn’t interact with.”
The program began about three years ago. The idea came from Erin Cunningham a member of AST who graduated from RB last year. Bova took over the job or coordinating the visits this year. Other members of AST also regularly participate and contribute ideas. A teacher typically accompanies the students on the visits, but the students do almost all of the work according to history teacher John Beasley, the sponsor of the AST club.
When it is time to go, Bova makes sure that she shakes hands with every resident who came to the program; she’s clearly the leader of the group.
“She’s like the master of ceremonies,” says Mihalik.
But, according to Bova, the students have as much, or more, fun than the residents.
“A lot of the kids come back week after week,” said Bova.
