As town officials weigh the pros and cons of turning the old Avery School into a multigenerational civic center, a private facility down the street has been running multigenerational programs for a year.
NewBridge on the Charles on Great Meadow Road in Dedham features a senior living center and the Rashi School, a private elementary through middle school, all on the same campus.
Lynda Bussgang is in charge of multigenerational programming at NewBridge on the Charles, a Hebrew SeniorLife facility.
Seniors and children benefit from each other’s company, Bussgang said. Children learn from the experiences of the elderly and interacting with youth can often stimulate seniors’ minds and memories, she said.
A committee assigned to look into possible uses for the Avery School building on High Street is considering recommending the site be used as a multigenerational civic space among several other options.
Organizations and municipalities across the country are looking into multigenerational spaces more and more, according to Bussgang.
The major intergenerational programs run on the campus are a volunteer group of seniors who visit classrooms and offer tutoring and a weekly visit by middle school students to seniors with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
“The entire middle school is trained to work effectively with those struggling with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia,” Bussgang said. “They work one-on-one and support them.”
While interactions like that could be beyond the scope of Dedham’s civic center, Bussgang said the middle school students were capable with the right supervision.
“I was shocked by how the kids rose to the occasion of doing this work,” she said.
The main obstacle a Dedham multigenerational civic center would have to overcome would be the two age groups’ fear of one another, Bussgang said. She recommended having rich programming for youth and for seniors separately as well as having multigenerational programs.
“It’s just fear of the unknown,” Bussgang said. “Often we hear from seniors ‘Do you think I can do that?’ or ‘Could I be successful with that?’ or from the kids ‘What do I say?’ or ‘What if I run out of things to talk about?’”
At the Rashi School, students are required to participate in certain multigenerational programs as part of the curriculum, but Bussgang said such programs could be successful on a voluntary basis if people join them and enjoy them.
“Word spreads if a program does well, and people come and create more of that,” Bussgang said.
As town officials weigh the pros and cons of turning the old Avery School into a multigenerational civic center, a private facility down the street has been running multigenerational programs for a year.
NewBridge on the Charles on Great Meadow Road in Dedham features a senior living center and the Rashi School, a private elementary through middle school, all on the same campus.
Lynda Bussgang is in charge of multigenerational programming at NewBridge on the Charles, a Hebrew SeniorLife facility.
Seniors and children benefit from each other’s company, Bussgang said. Children learn from the experiences of the elderly and interacting with youth can often stimulate seniors’ minds and memories, she said.
A committee assigned to look into possible uses for the Avery School building on High Street is considering recommending the site be used as a multigenerational civic space among several other options.
Organizations and municipalities across the country are looking into multigenerational spaces more and more, according to Bussgang.
The major intergenerational programs run on the campus are a volunteer group of seniors who visit classrooms and offer tutoring and a weekly visit by middle school students to seniors with dementia or Alzheimer’s disease.
“The entire middle school is trained to work effectively with those struggling with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia,” Bussgang said. “They work one-on-one and support them.”
While interactions like that could be beyond the scope of Dedham’s civic center, Bussgang said the middle school students were capable with the right supervision.
“I was shocked by how the kids rose to the occasion of doing this work,” she said.
The main obstacle a Dedham multigenerational civic center would have to overcome would be the two age groups’ fear of one another, Bussgang said. She recommended having rich programming for youth and for seniors separately as well as having multigenerational programs.
“It’s just fear of the unknown,” Bussgang said. “Often we hear from seniors ‘Do you think I can do that?’ or ‘Could I be successful with that?’ or from the kids ‘What do I say?’ or ‘What if I run out of things to talk about?’”
At the Rashi School, students are required to participate in certain multigenerational programs as part of the curriculum, but Bussgang said such programs could be successful on a voluntary basis if people join them and enjoy them.
“Word spreads if a program does well, and people come and create more of that,” Bussgang said.
Creating successful programs requires communication with both groups and finding out what each hopes to gain through doing the activity, according to Bussgang.
At the same time, renovations to the Avery School building would be required to make the building suitable to house multigenerational programming, Bussgang said.
At a Sept. 19 Avery School Re-Use Committee meeting, Dedham Youth Commission Director Robert Blaney strongly advocated for a combined youth and senior civic center.
“I see opportunities for senior citizens teaching kids, kids teaching senior citizens, kids not on the streets and kids doing something positive with their hands,” he said.
Among Dedham’s highest priorities for capital improvement projects are a new police station, a new fire station and a senior center, Town Administrator William Keegan said at the September meeting.
At the September Avery reuse meeting, Keegan said the Avery School presented an opportunity to move the town’s capital interests forward, particularly if a developer agrees to work on the project as a part of a public-private partnership.
“This offers us an opportunity to achieve a goal without using town resources,” Keegan said.
Staff writer Dave Eisenstadter can be reached at 781-433-8336 or deisenstadter@wickedlocal.com.
