Visitors in Eakate Hooldekodu.

During the weeks of the 9th to the 20th of April diffrent groups of pupil came to Eakate Hooldekodu to visit our clientes. Here are some photos.

Sixth and Seventh Lesson

In the sixth and the seventh lesson we had a big discussion about the topic "Retirement home". The students got papers with the general situation and their individual role.
We wanted to sensibilze them for the advantages of retirement homes, but also for the disadvantages and problems which can occure when an old person moves to a retirement home.
The situation was the following: A 78 year old man lived alone until he had an apoplexia and after this he is not able to live alone anymore. He and his four children have to discuss about the future. Some of them are against and some of them are in favor of the move to a retirement home, the old man himself is not sure what he prefers. They also invited the head of a retirement home to their home.
The characters were the following:
Emil, the old man, who isn't sure if he wants to spend the rest of his life in a retirement home. He is a little bit insecure about how life in the retirement is, and he fears the lonlyness. But on the other hand he doesn't want to make too much work for his children.
The first child is Thomas. He's a doctor and he know how important it is to have a professional care from people who are educated for elderly care. He thinks for Emil it is the best to live in a retirement home. His sister Simone has another opinion. She is teacher in a primary school and she  loves her job. But for her father she would reduce her work to parttime and take care of him for some days every week. Family is the most important thing for her, she doesn't like the thought that her dad has to live with strangersin an anonym atmosphere.
Her second brother Rudi shares this opinion. He also doesn't want that Emil has to move in a retirement home. For him the main reason is the budget. Rudi thinks to pay for a retirement home is wasting money, if they can do the same themselves if they organize it well. He is also able to take care of Emil some days per week and would like to share the work with his brothers and sisters. But the last brother Peter has no time to watch for his dad, because he has a great job since a short time and works around 60 hours per week. For him it is no problem to pay a lot of money for the bed in a good retirementhome and he would pay the main charges.
His housewife Maria can not understand how they can think about sending Emil to a retirement home. She is from Columbia and in her country nobody would insert his familymember to a retirement home. It's an affair of honor to take care of the parents when they are too old to live alone.
But Miss Maier, the agent from the retirement home, tries to convince everybody from especially her retirement home, because she has still some free beds there.
Every couple had some time to figure out some arguments for their roles. After this we sat in a round and the pupils started to discuss. In the end they had to find a solution what should happen with Emil.
At the end both groups had a solution. In both cases Emil should try out the retirement home for a couple of weeks and if he feels comfortable, hestays there and if not they would discuss again.
After this discussion we asked the pupil for their own opinion. What would they do if they were in the same situation as our family in the discussion round? Some of them couldn't imagine to let their parents move in a retirement home, others said it depended on the situation and on the health condition and some of them said that a retirementhome is in every case the best solution because than the parents have some people in their age.
All in all it was a very interesting lesson and we are ready for the first visit in the retirement home!

Fourth And Fifth Lesson

The topic of the fourth and fifth lesson was "Old times". In this lesson we wanted to show the pupils how the time was in which the old people grew up. The pupils had to prepare a presentation in groups of three about different periods. The first group about the 20s, the second group about the time during the Second World War, the third group about the postwar time and the beginning of the soviet time and the focus of the researches should be information about the life during these times. How was the economical situation? Did the people have enough food and money? How was the daily life? Which clothes and which music was modern? They should put their focus on the agegroup of the old people during their period. Most of them were born in the 20s or 30s, they spent their childhood during the second world war and their time as a working adult, maybe with a family, was during the Sowjet Union.
For the presentation they worked with PowerPoint and searched also for pictures, videos and interviews.
In the fifth lesson the groups showed their presentations in front of the class and shared information, pictures and some musicvideos.
After this we spoke about the diffrence between the life today and the life in which the old people grown up. And some of the pupil started to understand why the old people so often don't understand the life today  and why they have problems to accommodate in our world.

The second and third lesson

The second lesson started with a mindmap about "old people". We gave some pieces of papers to the students on which they should write at leat 3-4 associations they had about this topic. Everybody should present his sheets infront of the group and arrange them in a logical way on the board by finding headlines or topics like "diseases", "physical appearence", "spare time" etc.
At the end the black board was full of diffrent thoughts and associations about old people. Apparently things like grey hairs, no teeth, creases and slowly movements. Funny things like "old people wear always wear wollen clothes" or "they always have candies at home". But also different opinions about the stereotype of an old person came up: Some of the pupils thought that the mayority of old people would be funny, friendly, interesting and smart because of their life experiences and stories. Others had the opinion that most of them are angry, always in a bad mood, lazy and that they hate the youth. Of course we hope to change these negative attitude through our project and to sensibilze the students for the reasons of these clichés (that this generation grew up in different times, that compared to young people they are at the end of their life and they experience how they are getting weaker)
About one thing we were also surprised. Some boys told us, that most of the old people have problems with alcohol. First we wondered why they had this impression, as most alcoholics don't become very old. But then we realized that it might be because the average drunk people in the street are around fifty, and age that is considered as "old" by the students.
We hope that we can show another side from old people. So that they couuld say at the end: There are a few old people with alcohol problems but there are a lot without.
After this conversation we seperated them in groups of 4 their task was to prepare a poster listing up the differences between being young and being old. They could be inspired by their thoughts on the mind map at the board. They should not only do a comparasion, but also make up their mind about why these differences exist and which consequences they have for the relationship between the different age groups.
In the second part of the lesson the pupils got a little bit more time to work on their posters and to prepare the presentation. We sat in a circle and every group presented the posters. Many of them listed up things like "Old people are often in a bad mood - Young people are often in a good mood", "Old people have problems with technics - Young people haven't problems with thechnics". In this case we wanted the students to go deeper and asked questions like "Why do you think old people are more often in a bad mood than youths?" or "Why do they have problems with technics?"The pupil figured out that it might be hard to know that they don't have a real future anymore and your physical and mental state gets worse. Very often they also listed up"slowliness" in comparasion to "fast". We made them clear that at a high age you can't adapt every innovation and trend anymore. Also old people have lived their whole life without technical support of computers, they are used to live without it. Some don't see a reason why they should start to use it now at the end of their lives, some are overextended.
We discussed about the retirement pays old people receive and whether they think it's fair to give them money for "doing nothing". But almost everybody had the opinion that we have a good system, because the old people had also worked for a long time and payed taxes back in time.
All in all it was a really successfull lesson, becuase the students started to reflect about the "stereotypes" of old people. They realized that many of these stereotypes have a reason, somea are natural and they all depend from person to person.

Our first lesson

First we briefly introduced us and then started directly with a „simulation game“. Each student got a paper with a description of his behaviour and with the task that had to be realized in group. The task was the same for everybody: „Your task is to build a tower out of paper, which is as high as possible with the whole group. Your only tools are the scissors and the pencils.“ But there where three different codexes of behaviour. 
The first group only got the normal task and no special rules for their behaviour.
The second group had the following addition:
- you are not able to walk, neither to move your legs!
- you are not able to talk properly, so you can only communicate with vocals
The third group had also on their paper:
- if the scissors are not needed, they should be placed infront of the door
- the paper should always be on a proper pile
Our aim was to create three different groups with similiar behaviours within the big group of the class. The students shouldn't know what is on the paper of their classmates. That way we had one group, that symbolized the "normal" human being without any disabilities. The second group symbolized those who are physically disabled, the third group those who are mentally disabled and confused, like people with Altzheimer.
It is important that the word "old" is not used. The students should start to play and most of them will of course try to build the tower.

It was very interesting to see that the group of pupils who were not limited in their movements and articulation directly started to build the tower and did not really pay attention on their classmates, who were sitting in the other corner of the classroom, not being able to move towars the desk with the materials. Because of that after five minuts we remembered the pupils that the task is not only to build a tower, but also to do this with the whole group. In that moment some started to think about how they could "integrate" their classmates who were sitting in the corners. Some of them were carried on the back or with chairs to the place where the tower was built, but in some cases they didn't receive any help. Some resignated, but some also tried hard to get to the place where the rest of the group was. The group of „mental disable“ persons did their job very well and started during the game also to destroy the tower by an accident. The others who really wanted to build a tower as high as possible reacted really angry. After fifteen minuts we stoped the game and spoke about it in a circle of chairs.
At first, we asked several students how they felt about the game. Then we made a "line" through the classroom and they should stand on a place according to how they estimate themselves. We started by asking them: Do you think you contributed a lot to the fullfilling of the task? Who thought "yes, a lot" should stand on the left end, who thought "nothing" on the right end, the rest could stand somewhere inbetween. Then we asked the students to read out their tasks. Most of the pupils who only had the normal task stoof on the left end. We asked everybody to rise up the hand if they had the same task on their paper.
Then we asked someone in the middle to read the task, then at the right end.
Some other questions about which we discussed:
Do you think the game was "successfull"? What was the most important thing for you: Building a high tower or integrating everybody?
Was there a point where somebody needed help? Did he get it? Why, why not?
How did you feel about those who behaved different than you?
Compared to real life, which people are in the same situation as you were?
Quickly they got the idea of old people, about mental and physical disabilities.
After that we asked the „older people“ especially these pupil who were ignored by the other ones and so couldn't do anything. Next to „funny“ answers like „We felt well because we hadn't to do anything“ somebody also said, that it was a strange feeling that  to depend so much from the other ones and without help you have no chance to contribute something to the group.
The group of the „mental disable“ people said that experienced annoyance and incomprehensions.
After this conversation we introduced the whole project to them.

The last fifteen minuts of the lesson we used again to let them stand on our „imaginary line“. The pupil had to think about how much they agree with statements like „I really like old people.“, „I have many experiences with old people“, "I feel insecure when I meet old people", "old people always complain about the youth", "It is important that young and old people get together".

We always picked out few students who should explain why they stand where. In the end we also asked them what they expect from our project.