What happens when bright young people are left to their own devices? With Jump Start the Aging Workforce internships, JAWS, high school students not only finished one internship, they launched another self-directed experiment to connect with seniors in long term care.
Students were so interested in learning more about the seniors they met in long term care, they decided to start a story project to continue the blossoming relationships. This project includes multi-media platforms to tell the stories; there is music, poetry, painting, photography, written word and much more. With the support of Long-Term Care Ombudsmen, we are happy to know this project launched during Residents Rights Month, October, which is an opportunity to reaffirm that seniors in long term care are unique people with rich histories.
Aging with Altitude is recorded in the Pikes Peak region with a focus on topics of aging interest across the country. We talk about both the everyday and novel needs and approaches to age with altitude – whether you’re in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida or Leadville, Colorado. The Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging is the producer.
Transcript
MELISSA MARTS:
Today’s episode is a real treat, thinking about storytelling. We’ve all sat around the Thanksgiving table and heard the stories from our family members, but have we really sat and listened and soaked in the lessons learned, the transitions that people have gone through, how people have survived the ups and downs. Today, I have two special people in the studio with me, who are working on a really miraculous project to capture stories of older adults.
And it’s in honor of Resident Rights Month for people in long-term care, where the theme this year is called Stand With Me. And as we talk about storytelling today, we figure out ways to stand with people, bring us closer to each other, and learn how to care better for each other.
VOICEOVER:
This is a Studio 809 podcast. Engage.
MARTS:
Welcome to Aging with Altitude, a podcast providing information, advice, and resources for seniors, families, and caregivers, to help you live your best life, courtesy of the Pikes Peak Area Agency on Aging. We’re coming to you from the Studio 809 Community Podcast Studio at The Next Us, a professional cooperative environment for small businesses in downtown Colorado Springs.
I’m your host, Melissa Marts, with the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments Area Agency on Aging. Aging with Altitude is taking a moment to thank the sponsorship of Beacon Senior News for our episode today.
As we talk about storytelling, I will mention Beacon Senior News does a great job of storytelling. That’s what they do. And readers can pick up copies of the Beacon Senior News around town at the grocery stores, at the library district, at the senior center, so make sure you pick up your current version of Beacon Senior News, so that as seniors and caregivers and people of all ages, we can stay connected with what’s going on and hear the great stories of our region.
Welcome to today’s episode, as we kick off the fall season with our theme of storytelling. So in the studio with me today, I have two women, both with very compelling stories.
But before I introduce them, I have a little stage to set. For the past few months, I have been exploring the themes of transition and change. Of course, the changing seasons always offer a time to reflect and a time to collect a story or two.
For example, my mom’s birthday was last week, and she’s 83. She’s in a long term care community. And she doesn’t speak, she doesn’t move. And how do I tell? How do I have a birthday with her? And I decided I wanted to try to tell her story a little. And so we are bringing in an artist. And that artist is generating some imagery and pictures that tell my mom’s story. So looking forward to making that happen. We haven’t done it yet. We’re still looking into the artists.
But fall, great time to tell stories. Great time to have these two women in the studio with me. And thinking about transition and change.
I would like to first welcome Penny. I’ve known Penny for a couple of years now. She has had a career as a teacher. She’s a business consultant. And she is the JAWS entrepreneur, which in a little bit, we’ll hear more about JAWS. Penny is also a widow and a mom. So she has gone through transition change and has some stories to tell.
Also with me is Connie. Welcome, Connie. Connie works as a volunteer ombudsman with our Pikes Peak Area Council of Government’s Area Agency on Aging. And she is privileged to serve as an advocate for those people who are in long term care and assisted living. She has a degree in communications. She was an Iowa farm girl. But in retirement, she had a transition and some change and lived the RV life for quite a few years. I think it was seven years. She is a mother as well as Penny.
So welcome, Connie. Welcome, Penny.
Today’s episode is really the perfect opportunity for telling the story of how history and transition impacts our lives. And so first, I would like for Penny to tell us a little bit about JAWS. You have to tell us what JAWS is, what does JAWS stand for, and how that’s been a part of your life and transition for you and your story.
So tell a little bit about JAWS, Penny.
PENNY WHITNEY:
Thanks, Melissa. And hello, Connie. Good seeing you.
JAWS actually began in 2020, as an idea that something needed to be done to help address the devastating workforce conditions in long term care. If you think back to now, what seems like almost ancient history, as COVID was upon us, in our community, four of the first seven nursing homes to close, closed early in 2020-21.
And that was really a clarion call. And so UCCS was aware of an ARPA grant from El Paso County, and they decided to move forward. The opportunity to make a statement that long term care and the devastating impact COVID had on the workforce was something our community needed to be aware of.
JAWS became life at that time. JAWS stands for Jumpstart Aging Workforce Solutions. The grant was awarded to UCCS.
I worked as part of the UCCS team. And three and a half years later, JAWS is taking on a life of its own. We have high school students involved in long term care, we have university students, and we’re about ready to launch focus on a 50 plus workforce opportunity in long term care.
So the long story and the short story, is JAWS is a community effort to engage intergenerational activity in what is part of our community’s future, and that is an increasingly aging population.
MARTS:
So thanks, Penny. That’s a very compelling, wonderful story that you have created another chapter in your life as you launched JAWS and continue to make an impact in our community, as a woman who is aging herself.
And so thank you for making those things happen and bringing JAWS out. And I love the kind of idea that it’s intergenerational.
WHITNEY:
Absolutely:
MARTS:
We’ve talked about intergenerational activities for a while, and we’d like to see more of those.
And so to have the JAWS program up and running now, as it has been for a couple of years, utilizing high school students, having them get opportunities to get into long term care, see what it’s like, and hopefully get into that workforce, really important.
And so there’s another chapter in JAWS. I’m going to turn over to Connie here, our volunteer ombudsman in her next chapter of her life as she has jumped in and helps our agency with her work.
Now comes this next chapter of this storytelling idea, and also a little bit about Resident Rights Month. So October is Residents Rights Month. And so that’s an important thing, too.
But Connie, tell a little bit about how you came across this idea to capture stories and stories of older adults in long term care communities and how you’re working with JAWS.
CONNIE GARRELS:
Thank you, Melissa. Thanks for the opportunity to be here.
I was an RVer for seven years, full time, lived out of an RV. And when you’re traveling around this beautiful country, you meet a lot of folks. And a lot of folks are retired.
And a lot of retired folks have a lot of stories. So I listened to a lot of stories, shared a lot of my own. And each time I walked away with this sense of, I’d been blessed. They’d opened up to me. They gave me a part of them. And I just embraced that and started thinking about my own life story and what my kids don’t know.
And I started writing chapters and just looked into that. How do you do that? And that’s a lot of years. So anyway, I just embraced it. I love to read. I love to write. So it was all flowing very naturally for me.
And I thought, if I wasn’t able to write, how would I do that? I’d need a scribe. So I started thinking about that. And I thought, English students, you gotta give them some credit here. They like to read and they like to write, a lot of them. So here we go. It just started piecing together in my mind.
And fast forward it, I become an ombudsman and I’m in the office and I’m called into a meeting, and there’s Penny and the students. And I don’t know what I’m doing there, but it evolved. And these students had spent some time in these residences and they were talking about it, really excitedly talking about it.
And so then the question was, what was your favorite part? Oh, their stories. That was the mic drop right there. I’ve got a student, I’ve got a resident, and there’s this idea.
And it all just so immediately flowed together. It was just natural. And thanks to Penny, she just embraced this and kept passing it around.
And the students, Lily, she says, oh, my English teacher would be great. English teacher? Okay. That was in my mind.
So anyway, it just evolved and exploded. And I am so excited that they’re excited. And that’s how it started.
MARTS:
Yeah. And so you mentioned teachers and you mentioned English teachers. And am I right, Penny, that you actually were an English teacher at some point in time too?
WHITNEY:
Yes, I spent a lot of years as an English teacher, both in high school and in various adjunct college situations.
And I think I had the privilege of being an English teacher at Colorado Tech for a lot of, mostly men, that were returning from the Middle East war. And I think that I knew that the most powerful type of writing, as Connie said, for adults that really didn’t want to be in an English class, but needed to be there because of checking off the box, that what could engage them in writing, and for a lot of years, I’d experienced marvelous stories, was their own experience. And I think having had that, and then transitioning to the high school program of JAWS, we’ve had 250 student experiences in long-term care since the spring of 2023.
We’re working this fall with seven local school districts. We have interest from school district number eight to work with us, which is mind-blowing, because years ago, people in long-term care said, students don’t even want to be near us. That is absolutely wrong. And what draws the students are the residents and the resident stories. And it doesn’t have to make any difference if the stories make sense.
They love to listen and share stories. And that was really, as Connie said, the almost organic creation of this new JAWS project, called just JAWS Narratives. We have two pilots going. We will be listening to our first stories on Friday. And thanks to the ombudsman team, the stories will be able to be shared with our community and the state as part of Residents Rights Month. And the students are delighted to be engaged in the community sharing of the stories.
MARTS:
I really like being reminded during this fall time and this time of, kind of peeling back the layers of the onion and shedding some different light on how we engage in our world, knowing that this intergenerational project is happening, and we have young people capturing stories of older adults. I think this is just a really great time to be doing it and also glad to hear that it’s coinciding with Resident Rights Month. So well done, ladies.
WHITNEY:
Connie actually was the one in talking with Lily Welch, I don’t know, what, 2024, maybe ’23, I’m not sure. They’re the one that conjured this up, and it never got off the table. And now it’s alive and hopefully will grow.
And it’s compelling. I think one of the most powerful moments I had in listening to students talk about the impact of storytelling, one of the students identified that she had been adopted. I did not know that.
And she said, the reason I love this project is because I don’t have a lot of the stories. And I’m able to share the resident’s stories. And hopefully, some of the beneficiaries will be family members.
And as Connie said, how do we transfer our stories to our kids? Because I’m not quite as disciplined as Connie in that respect.
MARTS:
I’m sure you’re gonna find a way to be that. So Connie, tell us a little bit about Lily and your work with her.
GARRELS:
I don’t really know all that much about Lily, except that she’s just a spitfire.
MARTS:
And she’s a student, right?
GARRELS:
She’s a student.
MARTS:
Okay.
At District 8. A high school kid. At District 8. And I just remember that very first meeting, she is the one that just took it off the table and ran with it. And so it was just, at the meeting that we were all at, I kind of seek her out because she’s so beautifully energetic about this.
And what a great timing. Timing is everything, right? So we have this Residents’ Rights Month. What’s the slogan? Stand with me.
Stand with me, not by me. And there’s a nuance there. Stand with me.
And what a great way. What a great way. And it’s also encouraging creativity this month.
Go on theconsumervoice.org website, and there’s beautiful poems written by residents and artwork and all of that. So this is like the perfect time to grab some of these stories and make them known.
It’s a legacy. It’s posterity. It’s everything in one. And there’s a lot to be said about storytelling. It’s been on for ever. The greatest story ever told, Jesus. And what did He do? He told stories. That’s how we educated. We can do that. We can educate with the stories of the elders, the students coming up.
And it’s just a beautiful thing.
MARTS:
And it’s even more interesting to me that there’s an interaction in telling the stories. Because sometimes, as I’ve done with my own father, there’s a lot of my father telling me his story. It’s not always interactive.
So this, I think, is fun, because it’s actually there’s some interaction going on with the students and capturing the stories. And tell Connie a little bit about maybe what has been the process, because again, you guys are going to be recording some folks and telling stories this week.
How have you moved this along? Or how has Lily moved it along to bring people in?
GARRELS:
Sorry to interrupt. Actually, it’s Penny. Penny’s the motivator on this.
I’m in the background, just observing and tweaking and whatever, giving whatever I can to the program. But Penny’s the one that’s getting it moving and pushing it forward. So I’m going to…
MARTS:
That’s so funny, because Penny says, Connie’s doing it. Connie says, Penny’s doing it.
WHITNEY:
Actually, it’s Lily, McKenna, Katherine, and other students that are doing it. I think that is actually part of the energy of JAWS that I find so compelling. Students sign up through a career and technical education class. These are students that are interested in healthcare.
They do a 15-hour work-based learning in various long-term care partner communities. And I think the real key here, the magic, is the partnership between education, students, and businesses.
That’s the magic. And then the students come in, and the magic grows to include the residents, but also the stories of the staff. And that’s what engages the students.
So we have a part of JAWS called student leadership. And Lily was a part of that, which basically means that students are willing, on their own time, to be spokespersons to various community entities about the JAWS program. They love it.
And so Lily, and we’ll use Lily as the student example, she is the leader. And she’s working with residents at Bear Creek Senior Living. We have McKenna and Katherine working with residents at Liberty Heights.
The students work collaboratively with the staff and the residents. The students developed the framework. So I think what’s magical about this, that Connie identified, is they work together with the residents, and they built it on a 15-hour experience, which is a JAWS internship.
So it had a beginning, a middle, and an end, like a story. And then we have community advocates, like Connie, other ombudsmen, educators, and just interested community people, that are going to do the first reading and listen. The students will revise it, listen to the feedback, not telling them what to do.
But as a listener, this might be something you might want to think about. And they will revise them. And then the stories will go to the ombudsman to be shared with the state.
We will be using these stories as opportunities for projects in additional JAWS programs. So the students are the leaders here. And I think that’s one of the powerful components of JAWS.
Students have the opportunity to participate, learn, and lead. And they seem excited to be able to do that in an environment that many people think, most people don’t think about aging, long-term care, older people in neighborhoods, whether that’s a residential community or next door. I think that is the potential of JAWS for our community.
MARTS:
So there’s a conversation going on in our world around ageism and changing the narrative. And so what that means is that we’re not talking about an older adult population as the tsunami that’s flooding us and inundating us with all these issues and troubles. We’re really trying to dig deeper and say, what are the stories? What are the daily changing, impactful events that older adults are still doing? What are the lessons to be learned from the secret stories that get told in the long-term care community or in the RV park? So there’s a lot of really rich history and information to be gleaned and shared.
And even as I sit in this room with two women who are a little bit older than I am, but I’m still getting there myself. Again, I can’t emphasize enough the really great impact that the two of you have been making in this fourth quarter or fifth quarter, as my uncle likes to call it, time of life. Kudos to both of you guys for generating this and having the benefit of an intergenerational activity coming to be, too, with Lily and the students getting involved as well.
I’m curious what you talked about stories being told. So are people telling the stories and these are getting written down? What is the final product? And is there even an additional final product that might be coming too? So I’m just curious what that looks like and which of you might want to speak to that.
WHITNEY:
We don’t know what the final product is going to be because today’s Tuesday and we will first hear the stories that have been developed on Friday.
I can tell what students have said, oh, we can do this, we can do that. But I think the energy of the ombudsman that Connie can share about the vision of this growth of the scope of storytelling is really compelling. So I think the stories will be written.
I think there is interest in having a visual component in some of the stories, whether it’s a sketching, an artistic rendition, could be photography, could be something else. One of the most interesting components as a compliment to the written story, came out of the Liberty Heights team where students said, oh, we know friends of ours are really gifted musically. I hope that one of their stories will have an original musical composition by a student to provide the background for the language of the story.
But we don’t know yet. But Connie and the vision of the ombudsman, particularly in the visual documentation, is really compelling and I would love to have her share that.
GARRELS:
There is a potential for a video part to this, where we can put on video and record that way with that medium, to get some of these stories actively out there, like a documentary type of thing.
And we’re looking into that, seeing if there’s anybody that’s going to jump to that need. Also, as far as the ombudsman program and as an ombudsman, we’re always struggling against neglect and abuse and all of that. And the cool thing about stories, if you hear somebody’s story, they all of a sudden become alive and you get to know them.
And when you know somebody, you can start to care for them. And you can start to be more sensitive to their needs, to where they’re at. It’s not just a person that came in here because they needed extra help.
Yeah, they might need some extra help, but they’re still in that portion of their life. It’s a new chapter. And there’s a transition.
And they’re not done yet. They’re just not done yet. And so part of this storytelling narrative is just that.
It’s helping and encouraging them to keep going, keep sharing, keep living, and also exuding that to the staff. You can’t abuse me if you know me. Well, maybe you can’t. I don’t know. But the point being that it can be more encouraging, more enlightening, and the smile goes a long way. And if you can get a resident to smile, and then hey, let’s nudge it into a laugh.
That just lightens up the whole room, the whole dining room, the whole activities room. So it’s a way to engage the community to start knowing each other a little better, and to share some of their heart.
MARTS:
Yeah, I like it so much because nursing homes have this terrible connotation. And in our community and around the country, we want to refer to nursing homes now as long term care communities. Even as we do that, it’s still hard to see that as a place that, you know, is engaging and exciting to go to. And by bringing this project into these two places, and hopefully spreading it to more, we’re, again, changing the narrative there.
As you said, Connie, getting people to understand and learn about each other in different ways, and learning to care for each other in ways that people haven’t had an opportunity to care for each other until these stories get told. So really, again, a really unique project. And I’m really looking forward to how it is presented, how it comes to be.
I have these, I’m super excited to see a film, I’m super excited to see just a chapter book, I’m excited to just hear students retell a story if that’s kind of what happens, but really looking forward to it. And I’m glad you brought up the Resident Rights Month theme of Stand With Me. That is something that not a whole lot of people are aware of, that long term care communities and our country has something called Resident Rights Month, where we take a minute and it can be really boring, where we’re just talking about how many different rights are there for resident rights when the ombudsman are looking at it, I don’t know, 16 or something like that.
The resident has a right to self determination and to eat dessert if they want to eat dessert first or whatever. But to be able to turn Resident Rights Month into this opportunity to really dig and tell some stories is a really unique twist of our story, I think, here in our region, and hopefully across the country. And go ahead.
GARRELS:
It’s amazing timing. This is the 50th anniversary for consumer voice. So if everybody would just like in your spare time, go to their website, theconsumervoice.org, you can see a lot of the stuff that’s going on. And one of the rights that residents have is the right to dignity. And if you look at somebody, you can just look at them.
But if you see somebody, now there’s a different story.
MARTS:
Yeah.
GARRELS:
If we could just all start not looking but seeing each other.
And some of the facilities have little bios of the resident outside their door. And that was really impressive to me. It’s John was an aviator and flew in World War II.
And all of a sudden, I’m like, he’s really got a life. I want to know more about that. So it’s the path maybe less traveled now. But I hope it gets just worn down to nubbins in the future.
MARTS:
I think it will. I think it’s off to a really great start. And to make it an intergenerational opportunity also is really just a great program here in our community.
GARRELS:
There’s a quote from the film Australia 2008. And don’t quote my quote, but it goes something like this.
In the end, all you have is your story. And all you can hope is that you live a good one.
MARTS:
Well said.
And with that, we will look forward to the next chapter of this storytelling project. Thank you, Connie. Thank you, Penny.
WHITNEY:
Thanks, Melissa.
GARRELS:
Thank you, Melissa.
MARTS:
That’s the show. Thanks to all of you for being with us today. Aging with altitude is created by the Pikes Peak Area Council of Governments Area Agency on Aging. Visit us at ppacg.org and click on aging services for more information about the programs of the Area Agency on Aging.