Introducing This Quarter’s Theme: Redefining Eldership

By Katie Rainey

The classroom is hot and these thirty or so young women and I tug at our collars, fan our necks, laughing as we listen to one of my students read aloud. She’s reading, to my chagrin, from the year’s most popular book among pre-teens: 50 Shades of Grey. But I’m not irked or embarrassed by the book’s “racy” content. Rather, I’m perturbed by the awful writing, by the lackluster descriptions, by the lukewarm sentences this author cobbled together to make something kin to literature my kids have chosen to laud. 

This is the third, or so, student I’ve caught reading the novel on their iPhone in the middle of class. While I’m normally not one to discourage a student from reading anything, when it comes to this garbage writing (and also to Dan Brown, but that’s another story for another time) I’ve reached my limit. I don’t tell them to put it away, but I make a face and one of my kids accuses me of being a prude. A prude? Ha. 

They accuse me of being “too old” for the book. They look at me like I’m one of Bradbury’s firemen trying to censor what they read. I drop the lesson we’re in the middle of and tell them to pick a page to read aloud. They pick the “dirtiest” one. We listen to the vanilla moans and cliche turns of phrase for a moment and then I stop them. I tell them to repeat a few sentences and proceed to copy them on the blackboard, students giggling behind me. I decide to illustrate just how poor this writing is. I slash through incorrect grammar and poor word choices, and have my students fill in with more complex adjectives, better sensory details. Quite frankly, they’re far more imaginative than E.L. James. They laugh, but they’re into it. They give me more sentences and we rewrite this swill into something worth reading. By the end, my students are doubled over and my point has been made. 

Beyond the Blackboard

I think about this moment a lot. Mostly because it makes me laugh, but also because I surprised my students while simultaneously illustrating what trash writing that book is—yes, I get that’s not the point of the book, but there is a plethora of excellently written erotica out there. It burns me up to think of this novel as the standard. If they’re going to read “filth” at least read good filth. 

But I also think about the lesson I’d been teaching before, which escapes me now. That’s not the point. The point is my students took charge, in their own way. I allowed them to direct the course of the class with things that interest them, that get them excited and allow room for their expertise as well as mine. And I end up learning just as much about and from them that they do me. This may seem an odd example but, for me, it illustrates how together we’ve unconsciously redefined eldership through balance of power. I’ve written about sharing power before and I think that’s what intergenerational collaboration—Creative Generation’s overarching theme for the year—breaks down to for me. 

We’re moving into a new quarter, which means a new subtheme under our intergenerational collaboration umbrella: Redefining Eldership. As a reminder, our quarterly topics are:

  • GENUINE COLLABORATION | engaging with + empowering young people (See Jeff M. Poulin’s blog closing up this series)

  • REDEFINING ELDERSHIP | examining multiple possibilities of truth

  • VALUING WAYS OF KNOWING | honoring how and what we know

  • BUILDING TRUST | fostering sustainable relationships

I think traditionally, eldership is viewed as an older person passing down knowledge and wisdom to the younger generations. But what if it’s more than that? What if eldership is a means of transferring power and decision-making to younger generations through creating opportunities for leadership? 

Seat Assignments

I think we can think of it like the seating arrangement in a classroom. The traditional view of eldership might be a teacher at the front of the classroom (the elder) and the students in even rows facing the teacher (the younger generation). But now let’s rearrange our desks into a circle. The elder becomes equal with youth and knowledge is transferred in multiple ways, instead of just “top down.” Eldership becomes less about age and more about experience and shared power. Young people’s skills and lived experiences influence the elder just as much as the other way around. 

In the case of my classroom, we co-created the space together in order to take something mediocre (in this case, very poorly written trash) and transform it together into something worth reading, something worth enjoying. Redefining eldership doesn’t mean we negate the expertise of our elders. Instead, we’re creating multiple entry points to acting as an elder and learning from our youth in the process. 

Call for Submissions 

We’re looking for blogs on this quarter’s theme: Redefining Eldership. We want to collaborate with you and amplify what’s happening in your world, whether that’s direct in- or out-of-school arts and cultural education, administration, advocacy, field-wide services, or your personal artistic, cultural, or creative practice.

You should feel free to do any and all of the following:

  • Articulate your opinion;

  • Share trends you observe in your work;

  • Amplify the voices of young creatives;

  • Interpret academic writing;

  • Elevate projects and people; or

  • Document promising practices to support innovation in the field.

The post should be:

  • Be approximately, 500-750 words, though we can accommodate more or less, if the topic requires

  • Use headers to break up different sections

  • Embed links to references, whenever possible

  • Send us photos or videos to include!

  • Check out our blog guidelines here.