Lifelong Learning

I studied Gerontology in the late 1980’s, and in the course of learning about aging I was also introduced to the idea of lifelong learning. Actually, at the very advanced age of nineteen, I was the youngest student in my college class. Among my classmates were my own mother, several other ladies in their thirties and forties who were returning to school in order to improve their knowledge of an aging clientele or to train for work with the elderly, and a handful of older women who had come to learn about their own process of aging. My mother and I used to commute with a seventy year old grandmother who lived not far from my apartment. She made her way through all the challenges of the two year, intensive program, in part just to prove that she could do it.

Learning, I had thought up until that time, was pretty much the domain of the young. Sure, there were a few mature students at the local college, but they were a token few. The time I spent in that very unique classroom taught me this was far from the truth. I began to see that there was always something to learn, and always someone new to learn from.

In my time as a parent and a homeschooler, I’ve found it important to focus on learning not being restricted to a particular time or place. It’s an ongoing thing that can happen anywhere. Often when I say I homeschool my girls, people say they couldn’t manage it because they don’t know enough. I laugh about that, because the things I don’t already know, I learn with my kids.

I learn from my friends too, and this last little while I’ve learned an awful lot from a friend I made online. That just goes to show you that, not only can learning happen anywhere, but it can happen at a distance too!

Jerri Ann Reason is the administrator and publisher of Blogalogues. She has a media site at Jerri Ann Reason along with a site, Jerri Ann, where you can sign up to learn from her via webinars and ebooks. She has been writing online since 1999 and her media site can direct you to all things related to her. Her personal blog is Mom~E~Centric, if you want to see how she handles the stress of life.

This lady is a tremendous resource, not only to those of us in her online community, but also to her community at home where she is bringing parents back to school.

Cheers Jerri Ann!

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