PSYC 336 Week 8 Field Experience Project: Final Submission Example

Field Experience Project Final Submission: A Six-Visit Journal With an 84-Year-Old Retired Teacher and What It Taught About Aging

Introduction

As described in my Arrangement Description, I visited Mrs. H., an 84-year-old retired third-grade teacher, at her senior living community on six Thursday afternoons. Within a day of every visit I wrote up two things, the events of the afternoon and the lesson I took from them. The entries below are lightly edited for clarity, and identifying details have been removed.

Visit 1: First Afternoon

What happened: We met in her apartment over coffee. She showed me a framed class photo from 1974 and named nearly every child. She told me she had taught some of their grandchildren, and that two of her former students now visit her on her birthday.

What I learned: Her memory for her students was sharper than mine for my own classmates. The textbook's point that older adults vary enormously was obvious in the first ten minutes. I had expected to "help" her, but she spent most of the hour asking about my studies and correcting my grammar, kindly. I left feeling that I had been interviewed.

Visit 2: The Teaching Stories

What happened: She described integrating her classroom in the late 1960s and the parents who pulled children out. She grew quiet, then said she was proud of the ones who stayed.

What I learned: Quadagno (2018) describes the life course perspective, in which historical events shape how a cohort ages. Mrs. H.'s pride and her sadness both came from living through a particular moment in history.

Visit 3: The Garden Walk

What happened: We walked the garden path with her cane. She stopped often, not from tiredness, she said, but to look at the roses.

What I learned: I had been treating her pace as a limitation. She treated it as the point of the walk. When I asked whether the cane bothered her, she said it was a small price for staying on her feet, and that she would rather walk slowly than not at all. Her attitude reminded me of our forum on self-perceptions of aging.

Visit 4: The Photo Album

What happened: We started putting her loose family pictures in order for the album she wanted to leave her grandchildren. Each picture led to a story, and we finished only six pages.

What I learned: Reminiscence was not nostalgia for her; it was a way of handing her life to the next generation. The reminiscence studies pooled by Pinquart and Forstmeier (2012) reported gains in ego integrity and fewer depressive symptoms, and I could see why: she seemed lighter after each story.

Visit 5: A Hard Day

What happened: Her closest friend in the community had died two days before. She cried, then asked me to read aloud from the Psalms. We did not work on the album. She told me her friend had been the one person in the building who remembered the same songs she did.

What I learned: Loss is constant in later life. I learned that sometimes being present matters more than any activity I had planned, and that grief in later life often comes in close succession, with little time to recover between losses.

Visit 6: Finishing the Album

What happened: We finished the album, and she wrote a note to each grandchild on the first page. She asked whether I would visit after the course ended. I said yes, and she laughed and said she would hold me to it, since teachers always check homework.

What I learned: Over the term I noticed that her world had narrowed to a few people and a few deep commitments, her grandchildren, her book group and her church, much as socioemotional selectivity theory predicts when time is perceived as limited (Carstensen et al., 1999). The narrowing did not feel like loss; it felt chosen.

Reflection

Several lessons stand out. First, older adults are not a category but individuals with long histories; Mrs. H.'s life was shaped by her career, her faith and the history she lived through. Second, reminiscence can be purposeful work, not idle remembering; the album gave her stories a destination. Third, grief and joy sat side by side in her week, and neither canceled the other. Finally, my role was less to serve than to receive what she wanted to give. I began the project expecting to learn about aging from her limitations, and I end it having learned from her strengths. I plan to keep visiting.

References

Carstensen, L. L., Isaacowitz, D. M., & Charles, S. T. (1999). Taking time seriously: A theory of socioemotional selectivity. American Psychologist, 54(3), 165-181. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.54.3.165

Pinquart, M., & Forstmeier, S. (2012). Effects of reminiscence interventions on psychosocial outcomes: A meta-analysis. Aging and Mental Health, 16(5), 541-558. https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2011.651434

Quadagno, J. (2018). Aging and the life course: An introduction to social gerontology (7th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.