"All I heard were the deer and the deer told me they were watching over me."

If you work with elders you work with individuals who hold within themselves a historical record of the world at large. In some cases these historians are the last living witnesses to the most noteworthy events of the past one hundred years. Too, here in Alaska, native elders remember a life not often recorded in textbooks, but instead shared within their own villages or communities. This is the same for most indigenous people around the world.


A volunteer from the Alzheimer's Association comes to the Bridge to lead an art activity with the seniors twice a month. The activity she prepared for today was centered around the theme of "Our Childhood Homes." After each of the participating seniors were seated, she invited them to think about their place of birth and to began sketching that place on the sheets of paper that had been handed out to them.

I entered the room halfway through the activity and noticed one of the Tlingit seniors drawing a small house on her paper. Then she wrote across the paper where this and that was. It was a fascinating image that had map-like qualities. I knew from a previous drawing of her's that she was born inside a smoke house. The piece she was working on now was her "childhood home" and the place where she entered the world.  Close-up of her picture below:

I sat down next to her and began asking her a few questions about her drawing. Slowly but willingly, she told me stories of thirteen families living in this small house at the same time, of fishing for salmon, of netting and drying seaweed. She also told me a story about running-away from home, from the smoke house, when she was a child. Here is all that she told me:

"I am thinking of them poor days in the 1950's. We all slept inside around the bonfire in the middle of the smoke house. There were thirteen families living there together. I am proud of my family. We learned a lot from them. They told us how to can the fish. We did a lot of fishing ourselves. We pulled the fish in with nets and we cut them up.

For the seaweed we had to go far out into the ocean to get it. They told us not to take any seaweed where dead people were or near where people went to the bathroom. That's why we had to go real far out into the ocean to get the seaweed. Then we dried the seaweed in the smoke house on one side and then we turned it the next day onto the other side. The next day we turned it again and then we left it there for a week until it gets real dry and then we canned it or we ate that. Person got to learn to go way out to get beyond the dead people to get the seaweed.

I was away from home for a whole week when I was a kid.  I left a stick in a tree pointing to the smoke house so I would know how to get back. Someone told me how to do that. I ran away from home and I slept out in the woods. I woke up in the morning and did feel scared the first day, but then I told myself I don't need nobody, so I just kept moving. All I heard were the deer and the deer told me they were watching over me. I came back after a week. I found my stick and it showed me where to go. It's a real good past I got."

Here is a final close-up of the drawing she did today:

The above three paragraphs are part of this woman's autobiography, the narrative of the self. The questions stirring within me are how to assist her in adding more details, to create a timeline, to start a list of family names, on and on. She has drawn this map of a smoke house, a vegetable garden and the beach. She has noted at the bottom of the page - 13 familys home (Klawock). She has outlined much and she is right, she has a real good past.

Documenting oral histories told by elders attending or residing in senior facilities is on-going work around the world. Much has been unrecorded, and that is lost testimony to the collective history at large. What Montessori lessons are there to assist in this documentation? My initial answer came to me via a visual memory of children in Elementary II doing timelines in their classroom. That is a starting point. I have much reading to do this weekend on that work.

Tonight, though, I just want to close my eyes and imagine a deer talking to me; telling me that it's watching over me. I want to breathe in the smell of salmon and seaweed hanging inside the smoke house. Finally, I want to bend down onto my knees and pull weeds in the vegetable garden alongside all those whose hands planted what grew there. This is what good stories do. They make history come alive. Can you hear the deer talking to you?

The article below is from the January 25, 2013 edition of the Globe and Mail (Ottawa / Quebec Edition) and was written by Tralee Pearce. Photographs by Fred Lum. 
 

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A new school of thought 

on dementia

Montessori principles aim to reduce anxiety and provide meaningful activity for adults with cognitive diseases

‘Find the story and see the person’ 

As more Canadian families grapple with the heartache of dementia, a new program offers hope by applying the simple principles of Montessori education to elder care.

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A retired cardiologist sits at a table at Toronto’s L’Chaim Retirement Home, sorting through cardiograms. He’s not volunteering his time helping others, however. Unbeknownst to him, he’s working at keeping what memories he has.

 
Therese Holtzman makes cookies at Dementia Support Dov & Zipora Burstein Senior Centre in Toronto. L’Chaim is using the Montessori Method for Dementia program, a novel approach to combat dementia that has been rolling out in day centres and nursing homes across the country over the last few years. Taking the principles of the Montessori method created for children in the 1970s and applying them to adults suffering from a range of cognitive diseases, the program is seen as a ray of hope in what is often a heartbreaking reality. More than half a million Canadians are currently affected by dementia, and with an aging population, it is poised to become an even greater concern.
The program’s relatively simple approach is part of its appeal. As in the case of the doctor, the Montessori Method gets people to do tasks that feel familiar, along with brain-boosting games, discussion groups and a physical environment that’s designed to both reassure and stimulate. And it seems to help.
At the Dementia Support Dov & Zipora Burstein Senior Centre, the first day centre of its kind in the Greater Toronto Area, Miriam Greenberg is working at rolling out cookie dough. It’s obvious she’s done this many times before. Her manicured hands move the rolling pin very slowly to smooth out each segment to its edge, pressing any cracks that have formed back together.
In other settings, this petite 87-year-old and the three other women at the table would likely have been seen primarily as dementia patients who need constant care. Here, at the new seniors’ day centre Greenberg attends three times a week, she’s seen as a woman who might have enjoyed baking earlier in her life and who might enjoy it today, too. “I used to bake a lot,” she says as she sprinkles a nut mixture over the dough. “Grandma’s cookies,” she adds, her voice trailing off as she quietly lists the first few ingredients.
The Montessori Method for Dementia is the brain child of Gail Elliot, a retired McMaster University gerontologist who now runs a business training caregivers and consulting with public and private institutions. She was inspired by the work of an American psychologist, Cameron Camp, who in the late 1990s seized upon the idea that by finding the person behind the dementia, caregivers can find clues about how to strengthen their brain function – or at least slow the decline. “Find the story and see the person: Who is that person today and how can we bring that person out?” says Elliot. “Memories aren’t all gone. Let’s find out what still exists and capitalize on it and enhance the quality of life.”
While Elliot resists seeing too many parallels between young children and people with dementia so as not to infantilize anyone, she does think the Montessori brand may help the idea click for many.
“It’s so basic,” she says. “When you’re doing something with your child, you’re thinking what are the needs of this child? What does he like to do, what is he able to do? You don’t challenge him to do too much because he’ll be frustrated and gives up. But you make it a little harder than what he can do so he can improve.”
Others who work in the field see Montessori-based methods as having good potential for providing stimulation and engagement.
Habib Chaudhury, a professor and graduate program chair in the department of gerontology at Simon Fraser University, says more research is needed but there is “some evidence that the method reduces anxiety and provides meaningful activity for people with dementia.”

He says another factor he sees as beneficial is that the method relies heavily on the sensory environment, and the five senses, which is “very important in dementia experience.”
At the centre, it’s hard not to notice another major Montessori principle in play, that of the “prepared environment.” Large, legible signs fill the walls. There’s a huge calendar, reminding people what day it is. At the self-serve coffee and tea table everything down to the sugar bowl is labelled. While the exits are cleverly camouflaged by tromp l’oeil paintings of furniture – to avoid the common behaviour of many dementia patients to “exit-seek” – everything else is well labelled, including the bathrooms and the kitchen cupboards.
“Nothing is left to their memory to guess,” says Deborah Rothenberg, the director of operations, as we tour the centre. “It’s a safe place.”
Tables are prepped with adult versions of daycare activities like sorting, puzzles and games. Song books and stories are printed only on the right-hand page, with a “Please turn the page” note on every lower righthand corner. Where children might play with cute animal images, the activities here play to the crowd. There’s a basket of towels to fold and one holding socks to match. If there were men here today, they might be pointed in the direction of a bin filled with Home Depot tubing and plumbing connects – adult Lego if you will.
“Nothing is babyish,” she says. Except, that is, for one of the small rooms flanking the centre’s large open space filled with baby dolls and clothes. Rothenberg is careful to point out that this room is therapeutic for very low-functioning dementia clients, who can find cuddling dolls and dressing them comforting – the seven women here today are considered highfunctioning and would be insulted to be asked to play with dolls.
In addition to helping seniors spend a meaningful, enjoyable day, Elliot says the program can also curb many of the behaviours associated with dementia, such as patients grabbing at staff, repeatedly asking the same questions, wandering and screaming, which can be common in facilities without more resources.
“I’d like to transform the way we care for people with dementia.”
Greenberg’s daughter, Fern Kutnowski, says the difference in her mother, in the past four months she’s been attending the $59-a-day program, has been astounding. She had been on a decline health-wise and spent most of her time sitting in a chair looking out the window. Now, she’s more likely to engage in conversation with her daughter and doesn’t need to be nagged to get active. Although she was resistant to go at first, “She feels good at the end of the day. She’ll come home and say ‘I worked very hard today.’”
And, yes, baking may have played a role. “My mother was an amazing baker. We all used to ask for ‘Safta’s (grandmother’s) cookies.”
Greenberg, who has suffered from dementia for more than seven years, lived in an apartment with home-care help, but now lives in a seniors’ home. Kutnowski says she is functioning well and is engaged in life.

“If she was healthy, she might think this was nonsense. But it’s working. She’s not the same person.”

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It's spreading...Montessori with Elders. 

Imagine an Elders' Casa!

Flower Arranging in an Adult Day Program - Exercises in Decision Making

Flower arranging (click flower arranging to see the work being done in one of my old classrooms) was one of my favorite lessons to present when I was a teacher.  I loved the coupling of flowers and mathematics. Watching a 4 year old hold a stem of flowers up to a vase and estimating just how much they should cut off so that it would fit the height of the vase silenced me as I viewed their deep concentration.

Every few weeks, the local florist donates a large, plastic tub of flowers to the Bridge. It is such a wonderful gift. In the fall, they brought in dozens of miniature sunflowers.  Yellow-mooned blossoms brought a glow to the place.

The last donation was a mixture of roses and carnations. There were dozens of each. One of the seniors enjoys breaking the large quantity of flowers down into smaller groups from which she makes floral arrangements. She makes many decisions as she goes along regarding color and height combinations, as well as how many to put in one vase or another. This senior does have dementia. She may or may not remember she did the work an hour afterwards, but the evidence of her work remains for days.

Her first independent decision was to sort the flowers by color. She slowly pulled them out of the various vases and then piled them on the table into color groups. 

Then she took five or six of one color of carnations and placed those into a vase. Next, she selected a handful of flowers of a different color. She then stood back and took a moment to decide on what to add and where.

In the foreground of the photo below you can see one of her first completed arrangements. But wait, just when I thought she was done with that arrangement, she picked a white rose from another vase and....

...inserted it into the bundle of pink and purple carnations as an accent point. She leaned back for a moment and smiled at her work.

She worked for more than an hour creating one arrangement after another.

Decision making: She divided, that's right; she used mathematical skills, the flowers into groups and then she created enough arrangements for each of the dining tables. Writing this now, I have this new thought on flower arranging, and I have written a lot about the subject over the years.  There are overlapping elements between flower arranging and spooning - they are both activities/work in which quantities are distributed.

Then she placed one vase on each table - again, distribution of quantity.
 

She returned to her work table and I watched as she began working silently on one last arrangement of flowers.

When it was finished, she cleaned up her table/work area, returned to her usual seat and began looking at one of her magazines. I left the floor, turned the corner and there it was. A lovely gift placed on my desk next to my computer. She had placed the vase of flowers there for me.

 Her quiet work reminded me of a quote by 

Anne Morrow Lindbergh:

Arranging a bowl of flowers

in the morning can give a sense

of quiet in a crowded day - 

like writing a poem 

or saying a prayer

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Never underestimate the creative intelligence of an individual with dementia.

Art with Seniors - Symmetry

The prepared materials:

I choose a range of materials so as to move from very simple art work to challenging. I knew we had a couple of women who really enjoyed doing art in the group today, so I was confident that they would be able to do each of the symmetry activities.

 First activity - very basic introduction to symmetry cutting.

(sorry can't find the link)

Second activity - draw a curved line or shape on a piece of folded construction paper and then cut it out.

Some of the seniors are cable of making a flower cut-out like the above, but most aren't. Therefore, I made a second symmetry demonstration piece that required only the ability to draw a wiggly line.

Third activity - these handouts are much more challenging then the first ones. I modified this particular activity. I had them illustrate the outlined half of a butterfly, cut it out and then free-hand illustrate the other blank wing with their own design. So technically, these were not symmetrical in regards to the illustrations, but were in regards to the shape.

(butterfly illustration)

Fourth activity  - I choose this particular drawing because it is of  a wolf. I try to bring to the art and the creativity writing projects local elements. Wolves are well known in Alaska.

(wolf template)

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Before I handed out the first symmetry art activity, I defined symmetry for the group and discussed examples of it. As soon as the small sheets of paper with the half images printed on them were distributed by myself and my assistant, the seniors began cutting.

She was so surprised when she open up the cut out paper and saw that it was now a heart.

After everyone had cut-out their first activity, they began the second one. Pencils were being used to draw a variety of shapes and things on the folded piece of construction paper.

Here a senior has cut out a symmetrical, yellow Christmas tree. 

She saw the paper outline from her tree and said, "I like that." Soon she was busy trying to fit it on to a page of paper so as to glue it on.

Next, the butterfly illustration was passed out. Colored pencils were also provided, as well as scissors. 

 The butterflies were beautifully illustrated.

All worked with deep concentration on their art.

Here are two of the finished butterflies for you to view:

I cleaned up the work tables a little and then passed out the wolf sheets. I walked around the table and explained to everyone how to do this work; that they were to draw the other side of the wolf's face. I also handed out a completed image of the wolf's face - one half was a photograph and the other a student's (from a school outside of Alaska) illustration. I was growing concerned that the seniors might be getting tired and that I was putting before them too much work. But, the wolf is a favorite image locally, so all reached for the sheets as they were passed out.

(Note: Most of the women that are photographed below are over 85 years old. )

Above: The artist at work. 

Below: Her finished artwork.

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Above: The artist at work.

Below: Her finished artwork.

 

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Above: The artist at work. 

Below: Her finished art work.

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Above: The artist at work. 

Below: Her finished art work.

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Yet, not everyone participated. One senior stated, "Oh, I'm just not into all of that. I would rather read." That is exactly what she did.

However, every now and then, she walked over to the tables were the art was being made and praised one senior's work or another.

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Another senior is very detail oriented. She likes to organize the materials for making the art more than making the art itself. She also likes to be of assistance to those doing the art work. When one of the other seniors wanted help gluing their cut-out onto a piece of construction paper, it was this senior who I invited to do the gluing. She agreed to help immediately.

She then looked at the first symmetrical project papers, specifically the heart. A puzzled look came over her face. "Someone forgot to draw the lines on the other side of this paper," she said. A moment later, she had one in her hand and was using another to draw lines. She was very serious about her work. This was her art activity.

Photos and commentary:

She noted the folded half of a heart and then opened it. This is when she saw one side was blank. She was not interested in or even acknowledged symmetry nor that the lines were to be drawn by each individual after they cut the heart out. Instead, this simply lacked order to her. It did not make sense. It was incomplete, unfinished. She needed to carefully draw the lines on it so that it would be complete and then it would resonate order for her.

Below: She used the edge of one of the symmetry hearts to draw lines on another.

Below: She is almost finished.

Done. What was incomplete is now complete. Order is restored.  And if you noticed, she did do a piece of symmetry art work. She simply did it her way.