Teaching Gerontology

Marie Savundranayagam, Assistant Professor, Helen Bader School of Social Welfare, offers her experience using documentary film as a teaching tool in her Social Gerontology course.

When I prepare to teach a session, I make careful choices about what to discuss in class and what to provide as required readings that complement in-class content. Should I teach my students in social work and nursing about plaques and tangles, brain changes, problematic behaviors, and caregiver stress? I decided to take a different route. That information was already included in the required readings. Although it is important to know about the disease process and the impact on family members, I wanted my students to view dementia in terms of successful aging and to showcase examples of personhood-affirming strategies used by family members and leaders in the field. The whole course on social gerontology emphasized successful aging within the context of what people might see as age-related declines.

The documentary, "There is a Bridge" provided a perfect platform to discuss relatively new ways of thinking about dementia. Can there be successful aging with Alzheimer's disease? I began class by asking students to list words that come to mind when they hear "Alzheimer's disease" or "dementia". "Fear", "caregiver stress", and "loss of personality" were some of the descriptions offered by my students. We briefly discussed how dementia is often associated with the "loss of self". The fear of memory loss and inabilities to function mentally and physically might mean losing one's selfhood. However, "There is a Bridge" provided evidence to the contrary. The documentary depicted the building of bridges between persons with dementia and their families. We saw compassion and personhood in action. We saw families who maintained their relationship with the person with dementia by actively engaging in conversations or simply by being present. We were all marveled by Naomi Feil's (founder of validation therapy) approach to communicate with people who were primarily "non-verbal". We witnessed the meeting of minds - the building of bridges that communicated a common ground. It was refreshing to engage in a discussion of the possibilities for personhood in dementia care with my students.

My students will undoubtedly work with people with dementia in their careers. My hope is that this documentary and our discussion sparked an interest in addressing the person and not only the body when in comes to quality dementia care. Time will only tell what bridges they might build with their own clients with dementia.