Retired Elon faculty are discovering the joy of teaching adult learners.
In spring 2007 Helen Mackay was just months from wrapping up a 31-year career as an English teacher at Elon when the phone rang. It was her friend John Ketcham, who for years had pleaded with her to teach at Blakey Hall, the retirement community he owns near campus.
She had turned down the request before because of her hectic schedule, but now the timing was perfect.
“I told him, ‘this is your lucky day,’” Mackay recalls.
After meeting with Ketcham to discuss details, Mackay enlisted other retired Elon faculty and started a continuing education program for Blakey Hall residents in the fall. As part of the program, residents can sign up for four different courses – two in the spring and two in the fall – ranging in subjects from philosophy, literature, history, math and film. Each course includes four one-hour classes over two weeks.
The program fits well with Ketcham’s vision to create a retirement community that stimulates intellectual life. It also serves as a tool for retired Elon faculty to remain in an academic community.
“When you are in your work life, you have a lot of interactions with colleagues on a day-by-day basis,” says John Sullivan, a retired philosophy professor who has taught in the program since its inception. “When you retire, that’s hard to replace.”
A different learning and teaching experience
Both Mackay and Sullivan say being involved in the continuing education program has given them a sense of belonging to a different community of learners.
“You invariably receive more than you give,” Sullivan says. “There is a different sense of what learning can be; you’re freer – you’re now learning for your own deepening” not for a diploma.
Professor Emerita Carole Troxler, who retired in 2003 after 33 years of teaching history at Elon, agrees.
“The most liberating thing is that you don’t have to grade them, you don’t have to evaluate what they have learned,” Troxler says. “The biggest kick I get is the level of enthusiasm of the participants. They are very interested.”
Troxler has made it a point to take her students on field trips as part of her courses. She will teach a class next year, and she’s already thinking about where they may go.
Besides teaching at Blakey Hall, Sullivan and Troxler are also involved with LIFE@Elon, a university-sponsored program designed to offer learning opportunities to people ages 50 and older. Though the formats are different – LIFE@Elon offers 12 individual sessions in the fall and 12 in the spring – Sullivan says both programs help adults remain inquisitive, lifelong learners.
“I like being with adult learners,” Sullivan says. “I think they bring so much. Being in touch with people who are older but still vital gives me hope.”
That was apparent during one of his November classes at Blakey Hall about the four methods of Asian wisdom – the Tao, Confucius, Buddha and Zen Buddhism – and their contemporary application. As he shared his lecture, the group of 10 to 12 adult students listened attentively, took notes, asked questions, shared their thoughts and laughed together.
Student Dottie Olson, a retired piano instructor who lives in a nearby senior community with her husband, Hilding, says she enjoys listening to Sullivan, specially his contagious laughter. The classes have broadened her knowledge and view of the world.
“I was brought up in a very restrictive view,” she says. Now, she adds, “I’m a more cosmopolitan person.”
Bob Knowles, a retired United Church of Christ pastor who has participated in the program both as a student and professor, says the classes have kept his mind occupied in his old age, adding that he enjoys the relationships the classes build among participants and with the faculty.
“You can’t just sit back and say, ‘Okay, I’m waiting to die,’” he says of being retired. “I know I’m going to die but I’m going to live to the fullest first.”
Word about the program has spread and participants now come from not only the immediate neighborhood, but other retirement and senior communities in the greater Burlington area.
“I think we’ve accomplished something here,” Mackay says. “We’ve formed a little community. It has been tremendously satisfying.”
For more information about the continuing education program at Blakey Hall, contact Helen Mackay at mackay@triad.rr.com or 336-674-0924.