I went in to my first day of volunteering at the Alzheimer’s Day Services place not really knowing what to expect when we got there. I had doubts that some of the workers there might not want us to help out with the members of the facility because they would think that we are to young and don’t understand what the participants are really going through. What happened was the exact opposite of that. When my group first showed up to the site the person in charge welcomed us with open arms and showed us the facility and instructed us on what we were going to do for that day and week. During that day we were taught, “if you’ve met one person with Alzheimer’s, you’ve met one person with Alzheimer’s” (JJ Doughtie). This means that everyone is affected differently by Alzheimer’s disease, some people have a mild variation of it others have been effected by it worse. This lesson became evident through out the day as we talked individually with the “friends” of the ADS (Alzheimer’s Day Services) because some of them that are more affected by the disease would repeat the same stories or conversations with you every five to ten minuets. The first day we also participated in a dementia activity. In this activity we were put through a simulation of what it is like to have dementia. This simulation taught me how hard it is to do regular everyday home tasks, when you have dementia. I also got insight to the way people with dementias minds work because when you are in the activity you are told a list of activities that you have to remember to do while being constantly distracted by other things. Therefore you get flustered and angry easily because you cannot remember everything. This taught me and explained why you cannot always blame people with Alzheimer’s disease for their actions.
Reflection 1: I’m glad I didn’t come into Alt Breaks with any expectations. Today was exhausting. We woke up at five forty five in the morning, showered after traveling through a bizarrely located, creepy alleyway, ate breakfast, prepared our lunches, and left an hour early for a fifteen minute drive for fear of traffic. We arrived with forty five minutes to spare, and in that time we managed to hit a parked car with our van. Great start to our first day of volunteering. We met Lisa, or Coach Frias, our energetic and welcoming coach who gladly talked with us in the gym while she ate her breakfast. Empty lunch room style tables surrounded us, and Lisa’s warmth and welcome filled the room to ease our anxiety, especially after the parking lot mishap. Then comes Shelby, our Playworks contact, who has a cast on her leg. We help her bring supplies in, and she gives us the low down of what Playworks is all about. Inclusion, encouragement, positivity, acceptance. “Don’t yuck my yum!” After this low down, my nerves are heightened, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to help the kids at all. I don’t have much experience with them, and I feel like they’ll hate me. But I’m an adult to them, who knows how they’ll view me. We walk down two huge flights of stairs to get ready for the kids at recess. Here we go. This is show time. They arrive, talkative as kids are, and they organize in gendered lines along a wrap-around descending pathway that leads to our black top. The day passes in a blur, and I’ve never been so simultaneously exhausted and excited. I played kickball, dodgeball, mastered four square, wall ball, etc. The kids were amazingly receptive and inclusive of me. I expressed to Paige that I didn’t think I was doing very well with the kids, and she reassured me that they really enjoy my presence. I really came out of my shell when a young girl, a first grader, was crying, and I went over and helped her calm down. She warmed up to me, and we talked about how she didn’t feel like she had any friends in school. I saw myself as a child in her, which made it easy to say the right thing. She calmed down, and we talked to Coach Lisa about what to do. Everything worked out. I as able to bond with a lot of kids during four square and wall ball, and they really seemed to value my presence. Overall, I’m excited to get back to it tomorrow and see where it leads me.
Reflection 2: I love Playworks. Their mission, their staff, everything. Today we volunteered at Washington Elementary school with Coach Max, who was great. His style was much more lax and goofy than Coach Lisa’s, but it was just as great. While the rest of the group took a break, Max and I talked for a while about Playworks and his introduction to it. Max was a pretty open, laid-back character who let the kids learn from their own mistakes, but held them to a tight opening and dismissal schedule. It had been on my mind since working with Lisa at Aldama, but I honestly think I could be a Playworks coach. I didn’t have much experience with kids before this, and I usually felt awkward with them. But I’ve impressed myself with Playworks. The kids love me, and I absolutely love working with them. Max made me believe I could be a coach without really prompting me in that direction. Tomorrow, I’ll have the chance to ask coaches different questions about Playworks and how they came to it. The passion, drive, and care the coaches have for their job are things I truly admire and hope to garner in whatever future path I take. It’s so difficult to plan for the future now, but I’m so hopeful that something will work with Playworks, hopefully in LA. I’m not sure, though. But the structure they offer helps ease me into working with the kids. I honestly see it as a place to be as excited as I typically feel and to offer the emotional support I needed as a child to kids who might need the same thing. I see so much of myself on the playground and within the coaches. I want to surround myself with their energy and positivity so I can help the children in a way that I could have needed when I was younger.
Reflection 3: Today can be summed up by a simple quote from my site leader, Paige. “Did you feel the love?” Today was equally ridiculous and amazing, and I cannot imagine a better end to my time working at Aldama. Of course, today went by rapidly, but it was great simultaneously. The little girl from yesterday who I calmed down and talked to her about not having friends, in whom I saw a version of my elementary school self, approached me and invited me to play with her. She said she felt better, and she showed me a beautiful drawing she made, and I couldn’t have been happier to see that she could recognize the genuine care I had for her and build upon that to have a lasting relationship together, even though it only lasted for two days. I’m so sad that this couldn’t last longer. Lisa complimented the way I helped the children, which made me feel great. The overall best part of today was the very end. We had a Class Game Time with Coach Lisa with two different classes. The classes were going to play kickball against each other as an end of the year treat. One class was significantly smaller than the other, so Coach Lisa put all of the volunteers on the smaller team, but then a child from the bigger team asked if they could have just one volunteer. And then, out of nowhere they all started chanting my name, and I couldn’t help but break out into a fat grin. I had never felt so overwhelmingly loved and included by children before, and this really solidified my importance in the role of a volunteer for these kids. I couldn’t believe it, and it made today an absolutely amazing experience. I’m so glad to be here with them in Los Angeles.
Reflection 4: Unfortunately, today was our very last day of volunteering, and I’m sad to see this experience go. The fellow volunteers I’ve bonded with in close quarters, the Playworks faculty I’ve come to admire and respect, and the children whose voices are still so prevalent in my mind all made my experience something I’ll never forget. Someone else pointed out to me that the way I worked with the kids was that I developed very close, personal relationships with a few kids and held tight to them, while having the rest at a distance. And it’s true. I don’t hold the other kids away from me out of malice, but I think I subconsciously pick up on who’s more in need of my help or attention. Specifically, at Washington I bonded with a kid named Cody who was in the special needs class. He got in trouble pretty often, and his teacher regularly made him sit out of recess, which kind of goes against what I understood Playworks’ policies to be, but it’s not my decision to make. Even if I shouldn’t have, I went over to Cody and talked to him for a while about how and why he got in trouble. We talked about how he could react better in the future and take some time to cool off before he got angry. After our initial encounter, he regularly invited me to play hand ball with him, which I loved. And one Junior Coach went out of her way to include Cody in the game, which was amazing to view. Playworks’ mission of inclusion really shined through that Junior Coach, even though that was the school’s first year at Washington. I’m so thoroughly impressed with the program, and I’m so sad to leave it in California and go back to Kansas.
Reflection 5: How do I even begin to describe my experience with Playworks? Opportunistic, eye opening, and self-realizing all come to mind. Overall, this trip enlightened me to new versions of myself, new opportunities to consider, and new people to embrace fully. One of Playworks' main goals centers around serving underprivileged elementary school students to provide a socially, emotionally, and physically safe environment for children to have recess. Prior to Playworks, I had little experience working with children, and coming out of my experience, I've realized I can recognize the emotional needs some children have on the playground. Working with Playworks encouraged me to reflect on my own elementary school experience, and I saw so much of myself on the playground. Frustration, emotional distance, and taunts are ever so present on a free-for-all playground experience, and Playworks directly addresses those issues by creating a structured, comforting environment of which I was lucky enough to be a part. This experience offered me a glimpse into the daily life of a Playworks coach and has offered me new perspectives for my future as an adult, a college graduate, and a potential educator. I want to specifically thank Shelby, Coach Max, and Coach Frias for allowing seven strangers from Kansas a chance to work within their communities. Never before have I seen such passion for a cause, dedication to children's needs, and emotional accessibility coming from adults to children. Your work is incredibly inspiring, and I hope to one day have a similar impact in my future community as you do in yours. I can only imagine how I would be or think had I been exposed to Playworks' mission as a child. You've introduced me to some of the most impacting positivity I've ever encountered. Thank you for everything you do.
Reflection 2: The second day at the sight my group and I helped out more with they daily activities that the “friends” of the program did. It was interesting to see how at ADS they do the same kinds of activities everyday. They let us read the news to the “friends” in the morning. I found it interesting how they told us to try and avoid topics that involved dates. The reasoning behind this is because some of the friends their are not sure what day or year they are in sometimes so they don’t want to make them upset or take them out of their own little world. We mainly focused on topics like the weather or the festivals and activities in the city of Memphis that were happening in the month of May. After we read the current events we did music melodies. During this activity with the friends they put a CD on and gave them all the lyrics to the songs on the CDs so that they could sing along to them. The songs were all well known songs from the time period of the 1950’s to the 2000’s. I thought that this activity was fun because most of the friends seemed to like the songs and sing along with them. I also liked how it wasn’t just the friends that were singing, every one of the workers took part in the activity with them, and so it made the activity more fun. However I didn’t like how they were the same songs that were played the day before. The reason why I didn’t like this is because the friends that were not affected as much by the disease seemed to realize that they had sang these songs the day before so they didn’t want to participate in the activity.
Reflection 3: The third day we went to the other location that Alzheimer’s Day Service has in Memphis. At this location we met a brand new set of people that are affected by Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. There was one specific “friend” at this location that stuck out the most to me. This “friend” was wheel chair ridden and could not feed her self. According to the workers the “friend” had been there since they were 65 years old. When the friend first started to attend ADS, they could walk around, still knew what was going on sometimes, and could talk. But now that the “friend” is 93 years old she cannot do any of that. To me it was just sort of eye opening to see how progressive and bad Alzheimer’s disease could truly get. I thought it was funny because this “friend” still had some sass to them like they did in their younger years. When the “friend” would eat her food that you were feeding her she would sometimes try to bite your finger just to spite you because she could.
I also found that at this location there were more “friends” that were able bodied. Meaning that a lot of them could still walk around and part take in a lot more different types of activities than at the other place. I found this out because when we were all singing songs that everyone knew, some of them started to get up and dance. This was the most fun of the day because I got up and danced with them and I learned dance moves that they did when they were younger. This also made a lot of the “friends” happier because they were all doing something fun that they enjoyed instead of just simple tedious tasks or activities.
Reflection 4: Today my group did more office type work for Alzheimer’s Day Services. We were asked to help organize certain boxes and papers for them as well as to help them take innovatory of what they had at the facility. Although this was not as much fun as helping out with the “friends” at the facility, I still learned something. I learned that it takes a lot of work to keep an organization like this one up and running. We were told that they get almost all of their food except for a few items from the food bank and that they buy their food in bulk. I also learned that they do a fundraiser night every 6 months to try and help them raise money for the organization to try and help lower the cost of what it is to have a “friend” attend their. To me it seemed like the only way to keep an organization like this one afloat, they would have to stay very well organized and know what is going on at all times. We also learned what the symbols on the entire group of “friends” name tags mean. For example one “friend” had a picture of glasses, a cross, and a walker on their nametag. The glasses mean that the “friend” had glasses that they needs to wear, the cross identified that when its time for lunch they need to take medication, and the picture of the walker means that when the “friend” gets up to walk they need a walker to use to help them. I found it interesting that most “friends” there are okay with wearing a nametag around their neck. I asked a worker why it wouldn’t bug them because if I had to wear a nametag around my neck all day it would be annoying and they told me its because a lot of the time the “friends” have so much going on inside their head that they forget that its on their neck.
Reflection 5: On the last day my group was allowed to create an activity and conduct with the group of “friends” by us. The activity that my group created was sort of a mix of exercises with them while music they know plays; we called it a modified version of zumba. We did arm exercises with them, as well as leg exercises, before they ate lunch. I found this activity to be rewarding because we created it and they “friends” all seemed to enjoy it. On the last day I also learned why they had different types of plates for certain “friends”. For example one type of plate had a plastic guard on it, this guard enables the “friend to be able to scrape their food up on to their fork so they can eat their food. Another type of plate is one that has a raised rim around the entire plate; this allows the “friends” to again be able to scrape their food on to their fork as well as make it easier for them not to push food off the plate. The third type of plate is just a normal plate. The reasoning behind having different types of plates is to allow the “friends” to be able to feed them selves for as long as possible. A lot of “friends” see being able to feed them selves as something important and the workers at the facility don’t want to take that away from them because its an important part of everyday life to the “friends”. It was also interesting to see on the last day how us coming and leaving affected all of the “friends” at Alzheimer’s Day Services. Some of the “friends” didn’t really know what us leaving really meant. But there were some who realized that we were not from Memphis and that we had to go back home. I think that was the saddest part because the ones that did realize that started to cry because we were leaving and they did not want us to. It showed me how much of an impact we truly made on their lives for just the short ten days that we were there.
I went in to my first day of volunteering at the Alzheimer’s Day Services place not really knowing what to expect when we got there. I had doubts that some of the workers there might not want us to help out with the members of the facility because they would think that we are to young and don’t understand what the participants are really going through. What happened was the exact opposite of that. When my group first showed up to the site the person in charge welcomed us with open arms and showed us the facility and instructed us on what we were going to do for that day and week. During that day we were taught, “if you’ve met one person with Alzheimer’s, you’ve met one person with Alzheimer’s” (JJ Doughtie). This means that everyone is affected differently by Alzheimer’s disease, some people have a mild variation of it others have been effected by it worse. This lesson became evident through out the day as we talked individually with the “friends” of the ADS (Alzheimer’s Day Services) because some of them that are more affected by the disease would repeat the same stories or conversations with you every five to ten minuets.
ReplyDeleteThe first day we also participated in a dementia activity. In this activity we were put through a simulation of what it is like to have dementia. This simulation taught me how hard it is to do regular everyday home tasks, when you have dementia. I also got insight to the way people with dementias minds work because when you are in the activity you are told a list of activities that you have to remember to do while being constantly distracted by other things. Therefore you get flustered and angry easily because you cannot remember everything. This taught me and explained why you cannot always blame people with Alzheimer’s disease for their actions.
Reflection 1:
ReplyDeleteI’m glad I didn’t come into Alt Breaks with any expectations. Today was exhausting. We woke up at five forty five in the morning, showered after traveling through a bizarrely located, creepy alleyway, ate breakfast, prepared our lunches, and left an hour early for a fifteen minute drive for fear of traffic. We arrived with forty five minutes to spare, and in that time we managed to hit a parked car with our van. Great start to our first day of volunteering. We met Lisa, or Coach Frias, our energetic and welcoming coach who gladly talked with us in the gym while she ate her breakfast. Empty lunch room style tables surrounded us, and Lisa’s warmth and welcome filled the room to ease our anxiety, especially after the parking lot mishap. Then comes Shelby, our Playworks contact, who has a cast on her leg. We help her bring supplies in, and she gives us the low down of what Playworks is all about. Inclusion, encouragement, positivity, acceptance. “Don’t yuck my yum!” After this low down, my nerves are heightened, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to help the kids at all. I don’t have much experience with them, and I feel like they’ll hate me. But I’m an adult to them, who knows how they’ll view me. We walk down two huge flights of stairs to get ready for the kids at recess. Here we go. This is show time. They arrive, talkative as kids are, and they organize in gendered lines along a wrap-around descending pathway that leads to our black top. The day passes in a blur, and I’ve never been so simultaneously exhausted and excited. I played kickball, dodgeball, mastered four square, wall ball, etc. The kids were amazingly receptive and inclusive of me. I expressed to Paige that I didn’t think I was doing very well with the kids, and she reassured me that they really enjoy my presence. I really came out of my shell when a young girl, a first grader, was crying, and I went over and helped her calm down. She warmed up to me, and we talked about how she didn’t feel like she had any friends in school. I saw myself as a child in her, which made it easy to say the right thing. She calmed down, and we talked to Coach
Lisa about what to do. Everything worked out. I as able to bond with a lot of kids during four square and wall ball, and they really seemed to value my presence. Overall, I’m excited to get back to it tomorrow and see where it leads me.
Reflection 2:
ReplyDeleteI love Playworks. Their mission, their staff, everything. Today we volunteered at Washington Elementary school with Coach Max, who was great. His style was much more lax and goofy than Coach Lisa’s, but it was just as great. While the rest of the group took a break, Max and I talked for a while about Playworks and his introduction to it. Max was a pretty open, laid-back character who let the kids learn from their own mistakes, but held them to a tight opening and dismissal schedule. It had been on my mind since working with Lisa at Aldama, but I honestly think I could be a Playworks coach. I didn’t have much experience with kids before this, and I usually felt awkward with them. But I’ve impressed myself with Playworks. The kids love me, and I absolutely love working with them. Max made me believe I could be a coach without really prompting me in that direction. Tomorrow, I’ll have the chance to ask coaches different questions about Playworks and how they came to it. The passion, drive, and care the coaches have for their job are things I truly admire and hope to garner in whatever future path I take. It’s so difficult to plan for the future now, but I’m so hopeful that something will work with Playworks, hopefully in LA. I’m not sure, though. But the structure they offer helps ease me into working with the kids. I honestly see it as a place to be as excited as I typically feel and to offer the emotional support I needed as a child to kids who might need the same thing. I see so much of myself on the playground and within the coaches. I want to surround myself with their energy and positivity so I can help the children in a way that I could have needed when I was younger.
Reflection 3:
ReplyDeleteToday can be summed up by a simple quote from my site leader, Paige. “Did you feel the love?” Today was equally ridiculous and amazing, and I cannot imagine a better end to my time working at Aldama. Of course, today went by rapidly, but it was great simultaneously. The little girl from yesterday who I calmed down and talked to her about not having friends, in whom I saw a version of my elementary school self, approached me and invited me to play with her. She said she felt better, and she showed me a beautiful drawing she made, and I couldn’t have been happier to see that she could recognize the genuine care I had for her and build upon that to have a lasting relationship together, even though it only lasted for two days. I’m so sad that this couldn’t last longer. Lisa complimented the way I helped the children, which made me feel great. The overall best part of today was the very end. We had a Class Game Time with Coach Lisa with two different classes. The classes were going to play kickball against each other as an end of the year treat. One class was significantly smaller than the other, so Coach Lisa put all of the volunteers on the smaller team, but then a child from the bigger team asked if they could have just one volunteer. And then, out of nowhere they all started chanting my name, and I couldn’t help but break out into a fat grin. I had never felt so overwhelmingly loved and included by children before, and this really solidified my importance in the role of a volunteer for these kids. I couldn’t believe it, and it made today an absolutely amazing experience. I’m so glad to be here with them in Los Angeles.
Reflection 4:
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, today was our very last day of volunteering, and I’m sad to see this experience go. The fellow volunteers I’ve bonded with in close quarters, the Playworks faculty I’ve come to admire and respect, and the children whose voices are still so prevalent in my mind all made my experience something I’ll never forget. Someone else pointed out to me that the way I worked with the kids was that I developed very close, personal relationships with a few kids and held tight to them, while having the rest at a distance. And it’s true. I don’t hold the other kids away from me out of malice, but I think I subconsciously pick up on who’s more in need of my help or attention. Specifically, at Washington I bonded with a kid named Cody who was in the special needs class. He got in trouble pretty often, and his teacher regularly made him sit out of recess, which kind of goes against what I understood Playworks’ policies to be, but it’s not my decision to make. Even if I shouldn’t have, I went over to Cody and talked to him for a while about how and why he got in trouble. We talked about how he could react better in the future and take some time to cool off before he got angry. After our initial encounter, he regularly invited me to play hand ball with him, which I loved. And one Junior Coach went out of her way to include Cody in the game, which was amazing to view. Playworks’ mission of inclusion really shined through that Junior Coach, even though that was the school’s first year at Washington. I’m so thoroughly impressed with the program, and I’m so sad to leave it in California and go back to Kansas.
Reflection 5:
ReplyDeleteHow do I even begin to describe my experience with Playworks? Opportunistic, eye opening, and self-realizing all come to mind. Overall, this trip enlightened me to new versions of myself, new opportunities to consider, and new people to embrace fully.
One of Playworks' main goals centers around serving underprivileged elementary school students to provide a socially, emotionally, and physically safe environment for children to have recess.
Prior to Playworks, I had little experience working with children, and coming out of my experience, I've realized I can recognize the emotional needs some children have on the playground. Working with Playworks encouraged me to reflect on my own elementary school experience, and I saw so much of myself on the playground. Frustration, emotional distance, and taunts are ever so present on a free-for-all playground experience, and Playworks directly addresses those issues by creating a structured, comforting environment of which I was lucky enough to be a part.
This experience offered me a glimpse into the daily life of a Playworks coach and has offered me new perspectives for my future as an adult, a college graduate, and a potential educator.
I want to specifically thank Shelby, Coach Max, and Coach Frias for allowing seven strangers from Kansas a chance to work within their communities. Never before have I seen such passion for a cause, dedication to children's needs, and emotional accessibility coming from adults to children. Your work is incredibly inspiring, and I hope to one day have a similar impact in my future community as you do in yours. I can only imagine how I would be or think had I been exposed to Playworks' mission as a child. You've introduced me to some of the most impacting positivity I've ever encountered. Thank you for everything you do.
Reflection 2:
ReplyDeleteThe second day at the sight my group and I helped out more with they daily activities that the “friends” of the program did. It was interesting to see how at ADS they do the same kinds of activities everyday. They let us read the news to the “friends” in the morning. I found it interesting how they told us to try and avoid topics that involved dates. The reasoning behind this is because some of the friends their are not sure what day or year they are in sometimes so they don’t want to make them upset or take them out of their own little world. We mainly focused on topics like the weather or the festivals and activities in the city of Memphis that were happening in the month of May. After we read the current events we did music melodies. During this activity with the friends they put a CD on and gave them all the lyrics to the songs on the CDs so that they could sing along to them. The songs were all well known songs from the time period of the 1950’s to the 2000’s. I thought that this activity was fun because most of the friends seemed to like the songs and sing along with them. I also liked how it wasn’t just the friends that were singing, every one of the workers took part in the activity with them, and so it made the activity more fun. However I didn’t like how they were the same songs that were played the day before. The reason why I didn’t like this is because the friends that were not affected as much by the disease seemed to realize that they had sang these songs the day before so they didn’t want to participate in the activity.
Reflection 3:
ReplyDeleteThe third day we went to the other location that Alzheimer’s Day Service has in Memphis. At this location we met a brand new set of people that are affected by Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. There was one specific “friend” at this location that stuck out the most to me. This “friend” was wheel chair ridden and could not feed her self. According to the workers the “friend” had been there since they were 65 years old. When the friend first started to attend ADS, they could walk around, still knew what was going on sometimes, and could talk. But now that the “friend” is 93 years old she cannot do any of that. To me it was just sort of eye opening to see how progressive and bad Alzheimer’s disease could truly get. I thought it was funny because this “friend” still had some sass to them like they did in their younger years. When the “friend” would eat her food that you were feeding her she would sometimes try to bite your finger just to spite you because she could.
I also found that at this location there were more “friends” that were able bodied. Meaning that a lot of them could still walk around and part take in a lot more different types of activities than at the other place. I found this out because when we were all singing songs that everyone knew, some of them started to get up and dance. This was the most fun of the day because I got up and danced with them and I learned dance moves that they did when they were younger. This also made a lot of the “friends” happier because they were all doing something fun that they enjoyed instead of just simple tedious tasks or activities.
Reflection 4:
ReplyDeleteToday my group did more office type work for Alzheimer’s Day Services. We were asked to help organize certain boxes and papers for them as well as to help them take innovatory of what they had at the facility. Although this was not as much fun as helping out with the “friends” at the facility, I still learned something. I learned that it takes a lot of work to keep an organization like this one up and running. We were told that they get almost all of their food except for a few items from the food bank and that they buy their food in bulk. I also learned that they do a fundraiser night every 6 months to try and help them raise money for the organization to try and help lower the cost of what it is to have a “friend” attend their. To me it seemed like the only way to keep an organization like this one afloat, they would have to stay very well organized and know what is going on at all times. We also learned what the symbols on the entire group of “friends” name tags mean. For example one “friend” had a picture of glasses, a cross, and a walker on their nametag. The glasses mean that the “friend” had glasses that they needs to wear, the cross identified that when its time for lunch they need to take medication, and the picture of the walker means that when the “friend” gets up to walk they need a walker to use to help them. I found it interesting that most “friends” there are okay with wearing a nametag around their neck. I asked a worker why it wouldn’t bug them because if I had to wear a nametag around my neck all day it would be annoying and they told me its because a lot of the time the “friends” have so much going on inside their head that they forget that its on their neck.
Reflection 5:
ReplyDeleteOn the last day my group was allowed to create an activity and conduct with the group of “friends” by us. The activity that my group created was sort of a mix of exercises with them while music they know plays; we called it a modified version of zumba. We did arm exercises with them, as well as leg exercises, before they ate lunch. I found this activity to be rewarding because we created it and they “friends” all seemed to enjoy it. On the last day I also learned why they had different types of plates for certain “friends”. For example one type of plate had a plastic guard on it, this guard enables the “friend to be able to scrape their food up on to their fork so they can eat their food. Another type of plate is one that has a raised rim around the entire plate; this allows the “friends” to again be able to scrape their food on to their fork as well as make it easier for them not to push food off the plate. The third type of plate is just a normal plate. The reasoning behind having different types of plates is to allow the “friends” to be able to feed them selves for as long as possible. A lot of “friends” see being able to feed them selves as something important and the workers at the facility don’t want to take that away from them because its an important part of everyday life to the “friends”.
It was also interesting to see on the last day how us coming and leaving affected all of the “friends” at Alzheimer’s Day Services. Some of the “friends” didn’t really know what us leaving really meant. But there were some who realized that we were not from Memphis and that we had to go back home. I think that was the saddest part because the ones that did realize that started to cry because we were leaving and they did not want us to. It showed me how much of an impact we truly made on their lives for just the short ten days that we were there.