Green Lake first-graders make a difference in lives of elderly

A half-dozen sets of reading glasses get smeared with gel for the children to wear. This is what it's like to see through some 85-year-old eyes.

"Mr. Hansen, you're a blur," says 7-year-old Maya Cochran.

"I hate this," says her Green Lake Elementary School classmate, Christian Freytag, as he tries to peer under and then over his glasses to do the dot-to-dot writing assignment.

All this is preparation for a yearlong friendship between Steve Hansen's first-grade class at Green Lake and their "Grandpals," residents of The Hearthstone retirement community across the street.

Next, the children feel what it's like to be pushed in a wheelchair in a direction not to their liking, hear with cotton in their ears and tie knots in string when their hands are made awkward by thick cotton gloves.

For mixing two of his favorite populations — the very young and the frail elderly — Hansen deserves a round of applause from those who will join the fastest-growing age group in the nation. By the time these kids hit the job market, one in five people will be elderly, and the younger the better for breaking down social barriers.

The students may treat older people more sensitively when remembering their year of friendship. And they may owe their teacher a debt: Recent studies show that Americans have a great prejudice against the elderly and that people who view aging positively may live an average of seven years longer than those who don't.

"These kids live in a society that surrounds them with a whole lot of other information about age and old people, and a lot of it is not pleasant," said Anthony Greenwald, a University of Washington professor of psychology.

Greenwald invented a test that found that unconscious bias against the elderly is more common than unconscious racism — even among the elderly themselves. Of 130,000 people tested, 80 percent connected words such as "failure" or "agony" with photos of old faces.

A program like Green Lake's Grandpal Project is excellent, Greenwald said, because friendly, positive relationships between groups that may have reservations about each other does help break down barriers and change attitudes.

"It can certainly help," Greenwald said, "but it's very rare."

The kids in Hansen's class already have daily lessons from a vibrant 84-year-old tutor from The Hearthstone, but their Grandpals are different. They live in the skilled-nursing health center.

"So we need to be very sympathetic and understanding and very caring," Hansen later says from his oversized rocker on the classroom "listening" rug. "Use bigger voices and speak to them directly. Be gentle with their hands."

Hansen, who tends to wear soft sweaters and corduroy pants, has just reached the reading-glasses stage of midlife. He has been doing this program at this school for six years — the other first grade also has a program but visits more independent residents — and he has got it down to a pattern no one will allow him to change.

In late October, the children spend 90 minutes getting a feel for it. This year, Hansen reluctantly threw his own glasses into the gel-smeared mix.

The lesson paid off right away for one student, Myles Gouveia, who visited his 82-year-old neighbor and ran home to tell his mother the neighbor couldn't open a can of soup.

"It's just like the gloves, Myles, remember?" his mother, Casey Gouveia, responded, and the two agreed to take occasional meals to the neighbor. "He's got that correlation now."

The day for the first visit comes at last, but excitement is not the only emotion.

Before loading up a wagon with paperwhite bulbs to plant with the Grandpals, Hansen holds a pre-trip discussion at the listening rug, where three-quarters of the children have their fingers in their mouths.

"I'm getting excited and a little bit nervous," said Jacob Davis, and when Hansen asks the class why Jacob feels this way, he gets the answers he's looking for:

"We're meeting someone new."

"I've never been there. It could be scary."

Hansen admits to being nervous himself, he tells his class, but he knows he won't be worried when he goes back in two weeks.

"They're down there right now waiting for us," Hansen says, building the excitement. "Boys and girls, they are looking forward to seeing you guys!"

Down the hill to Hearthstone they go, but when the waist-high children, half of them missing their front teeth, come around the corner into the activity room where their Grandpals wait, they freeze.

Some of their Grandpals are slumped over, asleep in their wheelchairs. They stir when Hansen takes the microphone like a cruise-ship host to say how great it is to be back.

But after matching up the photo of their Grandpal with the real face, the students don't know what to say. Fortunately, many of the Grandpals do.

"I wore my hair just like yours when I was young," Sue Olson tells a very shy Emma Sheehan, periodically reaching out to lightly touch her hand.

"She prints well," Albert Farver says as he sits in as a substitute for Leah Berry's real Grandpal. "First grade, my, that's very good."

By the end of the hour, the shyness is melting.

When Hansen reads a story aloud to the group, Mariah Garner sits on the floor, leaning against the wheel of her Grandpal's chair. Betty Vosburg strokes Mariah's cheek, and now it's the little girl whose head slumps, soothed half asleep.

Census statistics show we have been a mobile society for at least the past half-century. Surveys by AARP and others say that living too far away is the biggest barrier grandparents find to spending time with their grandchildren.

But schools are finding there's great value in intergenerational teaching as grandparents and retirees have become the largest group of classroom helpers.

Since the Grandpals program started, some of the lessons have been hard.

Cathy Curley's son, Niall, now a third-grader, had a couple as his Grandpals two years ago. The wife was very ill and couldn't speak, but the husband told great stories and brought in photos of their life over the past 60 years.

At Christmas, watching Niall playing with a set of cowboys and Indians that was his gift from the couple, the wife struggled until she could move her foot enough to stroke her husband lightly with her toe.

He smiled and touched her, and she smiled back. Meanwhile, Curley and Hansen were brought to tears by the depth of their affection.

The next visit, Niall brought his Grandpals cookies, only to learn the wife had died that morning.

"My son had a lot of questions, and he was very concerned about the man," Curley said. But three months later, when Curley's 99-year-old grandmother died, it was familiar ground for Niall.

"We'd used that as an opportunity to talk about the ways to celebrate life," Curley said.

Immediately after their first visit to The Hearthstone, Hansen's students talked about what they'd experienced, including that a friend is a friend, no matter what the age.

"When can we go again?" Max Grasa asked.

The Hearthstone retirement community has a long waiting list. But the image of nursing homes in general is so poor, said The Hearthstone's acting executive director, Cindy Johnson, that in many cases people delay coming in when they could get help that would send them back home healthier.

Lorraine Benson, Leah Berry's new Grandpal, is just such an escapee. She lived in The Hearthstone's health center for five months before recovering and moving back upstairs. Her apartment overlooks Green Lake Elementary, and she watches the children play.

"And now I know one," Benson said.

Hansen would like to see more interaction between The Hearthstone and Green Lake, including assemblies.

By third grade, students hesitate being around the elderly, said Tamara Nielson, activity assistant, who has raised her toddler son at The Hearthstone since he was a baby.

"The younger, the better, that's for sure," she said. "The first-graders don't seem to have a hurdle to get over."

In the second visit, the children cut out outlines of their hands and their Grandpal's hand for a wreath.

"What did you do if your Grandpal's hand shook?" Hansen later would ask.

"I put my hand on her hand very gently," said Maya Cochran.

"How did it feel to you?"

"Her hand felt warm and really soft."

If there was any hesitation after the first visit, it was gone by visit two.

Mariah hurried to sit beside Vosburg's wheelchair at story time, and young Anna Dolde stood throughout the reading so her Grandpal, Helen Olin, could treasure the time of holding her hand.

"I will be back in two weeks," Anna annunciated clearly and with good volume after sharing a big hug with Olin.

"I'll be looking for you," Olin said.

Sherry Stripling: sstripling@ seattletimes.com.