Though I have taught Chinese Knot Making in school sabbatical, which had a very good feedback, while preparing for our first Chinese Knot lesson for the elderly, I was still not sure whether I could teach the elderly well, a group of people who may not learn new things as quickly as the young. Thus I purposely chose Shi Zi Jie, one of the easier types of Chinese Knot to teach the elderly and made it once again while thinking how I could make the instructions clear.
During the lesson today, most things went smoothly as expected. Though there were only six senior citizens as many of the elderly today went to a Tai Ji course (we will change the time for the lesson next time so more elderly who are interested will not have a hard time deciding between Tai Ji or the Chinese Knot making), they learned conscientiously and said that they would spread the message and bring more elderly to come. Basically, I showed them how to make Shi Zi Jie step by step and went around checking whether they had followed correctly. In spite of many mistakes made, I have to say that the elderly learned faster than I expected, as Chinese Knot is indeed not easy to make and even a tiny misstep in middle will lead to a peculiar pattern at last.
Of course, there were many details in the way of teaching which could be reformed. First of all, we can provide notes next time on how to make the Chinese Knot in steps to the elderly. We saw one of the elderly actually took down the main steps on a paper and thought, “why can we help them do this in advance so that they can refer the notes to recall what they learned in case they forget?” Furthermore, when I teach next time, I shall do the demonstration on how to make the knot on the same side of the elderly so that they will not get confused as what I demonstrate and what they follow are on the opposite direction.
The Chinese Knot making lesson lasted for two hours, after which we played Majiang, Pingzi and Nummy with elderly for a whole afternoon. We all had a good time and the elderly warmly invited us to come and play with them when we were free, which made we feel fulfilled as it showed that elderly enjoyed the time with us. With such well-received inter-generational activities, our relation with the elderly will go deeper and the bond between us will be stronger and surely the elderly will not feel isolated any more.
Li Xiaoyi 2007-6-8
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment