York seniors and youths Making Connections through digital project
Richmond Hill students preserving oral histories with modern skills

YorkRegion.com
July 15, 2016
Kim Zarzour  

Young people these days spend so much time indoors, tethered to their cell phones and computers, Teresa Porter wonders how they get by.

Old folks these days, lacking in digital skills, do things the old-fashioned way — the harder way — so Kevin Chik wonders how they get by.

Or at least, both used to wonder.

Now, a pilot project in York Region is linking two generations and they are both, young and old, discovering they have much to learn from each other.

It’s part of a two-year collaborative project between three York Region organizations — CHATS-Community & Home Assistance to Seniors, York Region Community Information and Volunteer Centre and the York Region District School Board — called Making Connections Storytelling York Region.

The Ontario Trillium Foundation-supported project connects seniors and their life wisdom with students and their digital expertise.

In one such project, students at Richmond Hill High School worked with five seniors from across York Region for several weeks this spring, recording memories from days gone past using the latest digital technology.

The process began with students in the Grade 12 English class interviewing five seniors about meaningful memories they wished to share.

The students then composed scripts from those memories, which they passed along to members of the Grade 11 Communications Technology class, who had spent the semester learning basic skills in video production, graphic design and photography.

The technology students helped the seniors work with the scripts to create a digital video recording of their stories with photographs, videos, music and memorabilia.

For many of the participants, it was a chance to discover how much life has changed — and how much the generations have in common.

Teresa Porter, of Newmarket, shared a memory from years ago, about how her daughter, when she was 16, found a baby bird in a broken nest.

“No one thought it would survive,” Porter told the students, “but she carefully nurtured the bird all summer long.”

Porter described how the tiny creature grew to trust the girl, flying through the tree canopy and returning to perch on her shoulder.

It was a good story to share. The Richmond Hill students are the same age as her teenaged daughter was and Porter thought they could relate.

But she was surprised to discover how little they could relate to a tale so closely linked to nature, so far removed from today’s world of constant digital connection.

“We don’t go outside much,” Kevin Chik, 16, told her. “It’s interesting, though, to hear about how life is outside the home.”

This is what it was like, Porter explained, before the days of cell phones in pockets, when entertainment was what you found outdoors.

“Don’t you go out in nature, go for hikes or camping or anything?”

They shook their heads. No.

And yet, if it weren’t for the students’ familiarity with digital technology, Porter knows she couldn’t tell her story to the rest of the world in such a compelling way.

“I think this is extraordinary project,” Porter said. “I’m blown away. The kids are so interesting, so enthusiastic.”

“We’re combining our strengths, I guess,” added Chik, who didn’t know what the course was when he signed up for it and now is considering career possibilities.

In another corner of the room, Dorothy Gummersall and her crew of kids peered through yellowed newspaper clippings.

“They were entertaining the troops here,” the senior said, pointing to one picture. “That is a singer I knew.”

Gummersall, of Aurora, is hoping the students can digitally recreate her story about life in Canada during the Second World War.

She was 7 or 8 at the time and she savoured the letters that connected her to her older brother, away at training camp in Vancouver, preparing for battle.

“I still remember clearly, sitting at the kitchen table, putting Xs and Os all along the edge of his letter,” she told the students.

But those kiss-and-hug symbols landed him in big trouble with his commanding officer, who demanded an explanation for the “secret code”.

The students are captivated by Gummersall’s stories of air raids and rationing gas tickets that her father, a dairy farmer, needed for his milk trucks.

David Brownlow, of Aurora, had another group enthralled with his tales from the Depression as a toddler who lived on a train — a converted 1904 sleeping car — as his father was a travelling “whistle-stop dentist”.

These are the kind of history lessons you don’t find in books, said Hadiqa Mawji, 16.

“The stories we tell to our friends aren’t as interesting as [the seniors’] stories,” added Qays Chaviwala, 17. “We just talk about what happened yesterday or last week. They have whole lives to talk about.”

For vice principal Aline Daniel, it’s a way to bring lessons to life.

“This is authentic. It’s not just a made-up project. They’ve built up these skills all semester and now, this is going to be published and available. The technology they are using, it’s the real deal.”

A celebratory screening is planned for October and participants will also make a presentation at the school board’s Quest conference for educators around the world, said Communications Technologies teacher Anna Wilson.

“You can see the seniors, how proud they are, and the students, too,” she added. “They’ve realized they have something to learn from them. It’s an opportunity to interact and glean their wisdom.”

A similar digital story project is continuing the coming year with seniors and students at Dr. G. W. Williams in Aurora, and the program is expected to be expanded to other elementary and secondary schools in the region this fall, according to Rosemary Park, chair of York Region Community Information and Volunteer Centre and manager of Making Connections.

Other digital story projects are planned for this summer including videos created by seniors who use community gardens, Park said.

The end goal is to encourage seniors’ digital literacy and provide storytelling, oral history, digital story skills and community reporting instruction to seniors and youth.

“It’s said that every time someone tells a story, it creates community by creating lines of connection,” Parks said. “Story by story, this is what the Making Connections York Region project is doing. We’re connecting generations, our many diverse cultures and each other.”