Older people volunteering in elementary schools
Experiences of the initiative “Magic Physics”
Presentation on the AGE Annual Conference 2016 in Brussels
Dear Ladies und gentlemen,
I am thankful for the opportunity to talk to you about the experiences with my project Magic Physics.
Please excuse me reading my lecture, I was afraid to stumble over my rusty English.
Let me start with a short description of my situation and the one of my colleagues when we retired?
Once upon a time we have been highly estimated engineers and scientists. Clients were asking for our technical advice and our bosses would get nervous, when we seemed to have caught a flu.
Then we retired.
Within the first months of retirement we organized our papers, repaired our model railways, travelled around and contacted friends.
But later on we realized:
Our expertise for railway systems was now rarely needed.
We felt no longer significant, our days lacked structure and goals were missing.
After I had worked through my to-do-list my son asked me for support. My nine years old granddaughter Agnes had to decide which High School to go to: the social or the scientific one. My son, also an engineer like me was of course equally enthusiastic about the latter. So it was clear that we would have to do some promotion for her to join the science world and I started experimenting with Agnes.
Due to this event I learned a lot about the importance of elementary schools:
In elementary schools the basis for further education will be set,
you meet children of all social levels
and attitudes towards learning are determined.
In Germany not the government but the states are in charge of all school matters: elementary schools as well as universities and vocational schools. Most states are short of money, so teachers’ tasks increased.
Therefore support is desperately needed, especially personal wise, which can be balanced out by volunteers.
But how to accomplish?
School-staff usually is quite sceptical towards people from the outside, mostly represented by complaining parents. Therefore volunteers need an official approach.
With the help of a female engineer I joined a local citizen foundation, which brought me in touch with elementary schools and financed my expenses.
My first project,
Magic Physics with scientific lesson modules, is still running since 2007.
Slide 2, Magic Physics with Lesson Modules What is the concept?
Teams of three to five volunteers with a scientific or technical background visit elementary schools, bringing along the equipment needed to perform physical experiments with 6 to 12-years-old kids.
Together with my colleagues I have developed more than a hundred of these experiments, structured into so called
lesson modules, such as air or water phenomena – in total 9 modules.
We have had a great success. Very shortly after the project started the demand increased rapidly so that we had to recruit additional volunteers.
I put together teams for each school and for pilot lessons.
Each team got a leader.
I provided task introductions and jobs were selected suitable to the abilities of my volunteers:
Some were team leaders and moderators, guiding through the lessons, where a didactic talent is required, which is hard to find
Others were supporting groups of three to four children at their desk, comprising the largest working group
Some were good experts in developing new experiments,
While others helped me with the documentation
The technical ones helped to put together and maintain the utensils.
Discussing our lessons with the teachers we installed a kind of quality control.
A funny development took place.
My team leaders got a kind of hierarchical reputation, which they enjoyed so much, that they eagerly took over additional of time requiring tasks. Having got more and more important for the project they refused to invite other volunteers to their team leader meetings and the other volunteers accepted their special reputation!!
I learned that some kind of hierarchy is not damaging but actually motivating the volunteers.
Therefore I tried to promote the “status” of everyone: those, who used to support students later took over moderators’ task. Some even rise to team leader. I further involved as many as I could in the development of additional experiments and their documentation.
I managed to build up a good working structure with the foundation. If there is some interest, I brought an organisation diagram with me, showing the split of responsibilities between the personal staff of the local citizen foundation and the volunteers.
Due to the high demand for our physic lessons I started spreading my ideas through satellite projects. But to my surprise, my local citizen foundation tried to prohibit the expansion. This fact caused me to leave the foundation after six years of cooperation.
I realized:
Local citizen foundations are generally not willing to cooperate with other local organizations, because they consider them to be rivals in acquiring donations. Sometimes I think:
Image improvement often is more important for them than the actual results of their projects.
At the moment about 70 volunteers are performing the Magic Physics with lesson modules under the control of my former citizen foundation and a few less in other cities, such as Erlangen Munich, Freising and
Darmstadt.
Having left the foundation in 2013 I changed to the “Deutscher Akademikerinnenbund e.V. (DAB)”
(Association of Academic Women in Germany) The advantages:
The DAB supported the expansion of my project with personal contacts in their city groups, especially in their working group “Frauen in Naturwissenschaft und Technik” (women in science and technology).
I could install my project in other cities using the DAB-contacts.
In July last year I could present my project on the senior exhibition SenNova in Frankfurt to many highly interested visitors.
In order, to bring more of those voluntary projects into our schools my DAB-working group wrote to the 16 state ministries of culture and recommended the financing of 3 to 10 deputy hours per week for each school adapting and controlling voluntary offers to teachers and kids.
I think the installation of an official coordinator between schools and voluntary offers could be an important step to support the co-operation.
According this letter I could officially inform the state ministries of culture about my project and found much attention.
I was further delegated into the BAGSO and I am hoping that Mr. Klumpp will give me further opportunities to publish my ideas and to motivate further associations for my projects.
The disadvantages:
The DAB cannot support my project financially. They are able to certificate tax-related donations, but they are not able to acquire donations for my projects.
So I have already spent quite a lot of time by writing applications.
Some donators request detailed descriptions of 5 to 7 pages, they want the application to be focussed on their actual goals or new headlines, they want a straight determination of financing plans and time schedules.
I want to emphasize this point:
Writing successful applications indeed requires experts of putting together those documents. It is a kind of discrimination of smaller organisations and prevents creative development.
Since I am 78, I have given up, and am now financing my project by my own donation, in order to have more time for the development of my experiments and not waste my time.
In that age one hardly can get any donations.
While the local citizen foundation provided an excellent public marketing, I now have to provide it by myself.
Unfortunately the board of the DAB is not prioritizing natural sciences and technologies, even though I am continuously trying to fascinate them.
In order to spread the Magic Physics I initiated a website in 2014 with the complete documentation as a free download. At the moment it has a daily request of up to 70 followers, and since it started 40.000 visitors in total.
Furthermore I started to develop a new project together with my colleague Martin Bock, a chemist.
Slide 3. Magic Physics with Reading Boxes I
Magic Physics with reading boxes is a new type of combined support of language and science.
Here you can see an example of our reading boxes “The beaker- telephone”.
Students read an easy instruction in order to put together an experiment; the material needed is stored in the box. Afterwards they conduct the experiment with their mentors. This procedure we call “Learning to read with Physics.”
Since May of this year we additionally modified the project for the requirements of refugee children by reducing the texts and adding pictures.
Slide 4. Refugee Class with Reading Boxes II
The reading boxes for refugees are already used in five elementary schools. I assume their importance will increase, as it is a complete new encouraging approach for teaching children the German language.
Now I again have to work hard, in order getting this new concept well known to related schools and teachers, but the internet with its various platforms is a wonderful supporter.
At least I will give a record about my experiences with the recruitment of volunteers.
Slide 5. Recruitment of Volunteers.
I mainly work with older people. They want to be useful and enjoy social contacts but are no risk-takers and usually aren’t as curious as they once used to be.
They prefer
Activities within their well known surrounding
to work together with familiar people or people of the same social background
Various options in order to find a suitable project.
Detailed description of the tasks.
Most elderly shy away from long lasting obligations.
I learned recruitment is successful, if you can meet a group of retired employees of the same company or association.
For example:
In 2014 the pharmaceutical company Bayer invited 250 retired former employees to an afternoon meeting and offered them a market of voluntary activities. Twelve organisations, including the Magic Physics, ran a stand and could recruit. That afternoon we managed to motivate 20 potential – in our situation almost too many to immediately introduce into school lessons. We won at least 12 volunteers for our teams.
Slide 6. Volunteers of the Magic Physics
In 2012 I analyzed the background of the 44 volunteer of the citizen foundation.
33 volunteers were recruited by personal approach, 8 of them during official events, 11 volunteers, only 25 % have been recruited by the advertising of the foundation.
The slide is hard to read, but I have some copies with me.
Back to slide 5: Recruitment of volunteers
I learned: if someone is interested in a special voluntary job she has to be put immediately into her task.
And this has to happen within 14 days!!
Despite having to act immediately the introduction has to go smoothly. Therefore it is better to ask: “Do you want to attend a lesson next week?” than to tell them: “You can start tomorrow with one lesson per week”; such an approach would scare them off.
Another great recruitment success was the advertising in a local print media signed by the well known and highly appreciated Association of German Engineers (Verein Deutscher Ingenieure).
I learned if you want volunteers with specific abilities, in my case with a scientific background or technical interest, you should use the support of local media and task related associations.
That means
Older people need a personal approach; official events are a great support for the recruitment.
Personal approach can be realized via companies, associations, clubs, circles of friends, universities and so on.
Printed information should also support the recruitment but it cannot replace the personal approach.
I dream from a brochure for people expecting their retirement. This brochure should contain information about the coming up obligations regarding insurances, rent application and proposals for sports, cultural offers and related associations but it also should make familiar with possibilities to volunteer. It could come out as a bible for retired persons.
I brought a book as an example with me.
Considering that we have an increasing number of long living senior citizens, who are healthy and keen to transfer their knowledge to the younger generation, we have to promote their voluntary activities especially on the sector of education.
In former times seniors could transfer their experiences to their grandchildren within 3-generation-families.
Children learned to deal with older people.
But nowadays there are no more 3-generation-families, family members are even no more living in the same cities. So the cooperation between different generations has to happen outside the families. Sufficient possibilities in the neighbourhood have to be provided.
Slide 7. Requirements of Volunteers
To keep volunteers in charge they should be happy with their job.
Especially older volunteers require appreciation, they want to be needed and they are happy to have a meaningful goal in their age.
In addition to that they want social contacts. They want to exchange their experiences. Parties and meetings are important.
Older people have to fight against a lot of ability reductions, such as reduced hearing, seeing, mobility, they have memory problems etc. If they realize one unique improvement of one of their abilities it is a wonderful compensation for them.
Monthly meetings and many phone calls are important.
Professional coaching would be valued.
And over all: They should have fun.
Heiter weiter ! Vom glücklichen dritten Leben
Maria von Welser – südwest-Verlag
I think that’s something I could realize with my team. Have a look on my volunteers with their mentees.
Slide 8. Volunteers with their Mentees
I hope my experiences have brought some recognition about the promotion of volunteer and their situation.
As a result of my experiences I have put together the advantages und problems in the following chart.
Slide 9. Advatages and Problems of Voluntary Work
I think this may only be stimulation, to consider possible improvements.
My greatest problem is – and I think I am not the only volunteer:
I don’t find a successor, which means: my project might disappear sooner or later if cannot find another association that is willing to take over the Magic Physics with Reading Boxes.
Probably you have some ideas how to solve my problem.
I think I have already started to improve the image of older people from the view of some young students.
Thank you for your attention and please have a look on my last chart.
Slide 10. Image Change by Voluntary Work
Brussels, 18 November 2016 Maren Heinzerling
