By Michael Grass
Center for an Informed Public
University of Washington
As high school students across Washington start a new school year, a group of 40 senior citizens in a rural Skagit County community have been thinking back fondly on an intergenerational learning event in June, the culmination of a school year’s worth of media literacy lessons and educational engagement work at Sedro-Woolley High School.
The “Leveling Up Seniors” event, co-organized by Sedro-Woolley teachers and librarians, the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public, Central Skagit Library System, and the Sedro-Woolley Senior Center, not only shared important lessons around technology, social media, and information literacy skills, but also fostered valuable community connections between older and younger generations.
“I’ll remember the noise, a distinctive buzz as all the conversations melded into one sound! It was magical,” said David Bricka, the program coordinator at the Country Meadow Village assisted living community who brought five residents to the June 10 event at the Sedro-Woolley Community Center.
“Our residents got off the bus with wide bright smiles on their faces,” Bricka said. “The fact that they had these youngsters pay attention to them was such an amazing part of the day.”
Linsey Kitchens, who teaches English language arts and is a librarian at Sedro-Woolley High School, helped organize the Leveling Up Seniors event with colleagues and community collaborators, including the CIP, where she was a member of the first cohort of the multidisciplinary research center’s Community Fellowship program in 2023-24. The fellowship program, now in its second year, aims to provide practitioners in wide-ranging fields, such as journalism, education, technology, librarianship, government, community organizations, and law, with opportunities to explore the intersection between research and professional experience.
“I would love to keep teaching ‘Raisin in the Sun,’ but also, I have to teach the students in front of me, the students with devices in their hands, the students who do everything in their world on social media,” Kitchens said in an April video interview feature produced by Education Week. “So, if I’m not showing up to meet my students where they’re at, I really don’t feel like I’m doing my job.”
In March, Kitchens brought her students to MisinfoDay 2024 at the University of Washington’s Seattle campus, part of annual statewide educational activities for Washington high school students, teachers and librarians co-organized by UW’s Center for an Informed Public and Washington State University’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication.
During June’s intergenerational learning event, seniors circulated among a series of educational stations where Sedro-Woolley high school students shared digital and media literacy educational lessons from their classroom work, including understanding how algorithms work, spotting online bots, avoiding confirmation bias, and using the SIFT method to contextualize and factcheck online claims and reverse-image searches to find the original source of an image.
After a lunchtime presentation by Jason Young, who helps lead the Co-Designing for Trust research collaboration at the CIP, the tables were turned and the seniors engaged the students with skills, hobbies and knowledge from their lives to share. Senior-led activities included tying neckties, arranging floral displays, magnet-making, and playing the guitar.
Bricka noted how one student wanted him to get a pen so a local former professional football player and Saskatchewan Roughrider All-Star Gamer could sign one of his trading cards that he brought to give out.
“I loved seeing the undivided attention that the students had when they were chatting with our residents about their skill. They were all so engaged and asked such great questions,” he said.
In an interview with the Skagit Valley Herald, Sedro-Woolley student Luka Murcray said he thinks intergenerational learning events are important for passing along knowledge that may otherwise be lost. “I think it’s important they talk about what they know to the younger generation,” he said. “Otherwise staples of their generation could be lost.”
According to Young, a UW Information School senior research scientist and director of the Technology & Social Change Group, while traditional media literacy education approaches can teach valuable skills and knowledge, intergenerational learning opportunities like Leveling Up Seniors can pull in diverse perspectives, foster meaningful dialogue and strengthen community knowledge and shared values.
CIP researchers have collaborated with local educators in places like Medicine Lake and Port Townsend on similar intergenerational learning events. “These types of educational events have been so meaningful, not only for students, but the adults in their lives and community,” Young said. “The impact really does go beyond education, as important as that is. Participants leave with a renewed sense of community, and ready to work together to achieve a common future. There’s nothing more powerful than that.”
- WATCH | CIP video: “Fostering a More Informed Public Through Media Literacy Education”
- WATCH | OSPI video: “Port Townsend Students Host a Media Mentorship Event
- WATCH | Education Week video: “Why This Educator Uses Aliens to Teach Media Literacy”
Michael Grass is the Center for an Informed Public’s assistant director for communications.
Photos by Michael Grass / UW Center for an Informed Public.
