Fridays this fall, 82-year-old Marion Gommerman will be sitting in a Toronto classroom alongside fellow university students young enough to be her grandkids.
It’s a journey that began with a seed planted a year ago when she participated in the class with other residents of her assisted-living facility in Toronto.
Relishing the friendships she made and hungering to know more, the course got her thinking about returning to studies she’d started decades earlier. Then she watched a grandson cross the stage at convocation — and thought she’d have to use a walker or cane if in his place.
Now, she’s enrolled for credit as a University of Toronto student. Her first course explores health and Canada’s aging populations.
“If I didn’t take [the] opportunity, I’d be wasting it,” Gommerman said.
“It’s not to get the paper…. It’s just to feel that I was able to accomplish it and test myself.”
Canadians don’t always get opportunities to deeply connect with people in other age brackets, but some who are learning alongside each other describe it as an energizing and illuminating experience that benefits everyone.
Building ‘generational solidarity’ in the classroom
Raza Mirza has taught the health and aging course Gommerman’s taking for about a decade, and made adjustments over time.
He began inviting seniors to in-class visits, which everyone enjoyed, according to the assistant professor of social work at the University of Toronto. While the elders weren’t taking the course at that time, they often stayed to listen in, for example, to lectures “about risk factors for dementia or social isolation or retirement planning.”
His idea to host classes in a local seniors’ home led to even more positive, energizing interactions. This fall is his third edition of that immersive, intergenerational classroom, a learning model popping up at other Canadian schools as well.
It helps participants young and old to build friendships and new connections after the “social recession” of the pandemic, Mirza said, and to discover common ground while also engaging with different perspectives.
Pitting age brackets against one another creates tension and fuels ageism, believes Mirza, and he hopes to get participants beyond stereotypes.
“You’ll hear things in the news saying ‘Older adults are using way more healthcare resources’ [or] ‘Boomers need to sell their homes; unless they do so, younger people can’t get into the housing market,'” he recounted.
“What we’re hoping to do in this classroom is build a little bit more generational solidarity by bringing people to the table together to have some of these conversations.”
Fourth-year student Carolina Galhardo already does extensive volunteer work with seniors in care outside of school, but she’s excited for more formal learning in Mirza’s class.
“Interacting with the older adults from the course and learning through their experiences directly, I think it’s going to be super valuable,” said Galhardo, who’s studying biology, immunology and physiology. “Everyone’s going to age and become older adults in the community … it’s very pertinent.”
Starting university with grandma means engaging ‘on a new level’
For octogenarian Gommerman, returning to school is extra sweet as she’s joining another grandson, Sam Griffin, who just started studying jazz performance, also at University of Toronto.
Griffin recalled a watershed moment years ago when, at a time he was obsessed with 80s rockers The Smiths, his grandpa steered him toward jazz bandleader Duke Ellington.
His thinks his grandma could similarly inspire younger classmates with unexpected views and insights, sparking “deeper understanding of the course material, which is obviously a good thing, but also just a much richer experience,” noted the 18-year-old.
“You also end up coming away from that learning with [a perspective] you didn’t know before. And if university is about one thing at all, it’s about learning.”
Back to school at 82
