Bridging the generational gap

Ruston Elementary School celebrated Grandparents’ Day Friday by inviting grandparents to a fun-filled morning of activities aimed at connecting the generations together.

In the second year for this event, grandparents arrived at the school in droves to sit in their students’ classrooms, see firsthand how their grandchildren spend their school days, and learn more about the younger generation, and vice versa.

“First they’re doing an interview,” Curriculum Strategist Shauna Vallery said. “The children are interviewing their grandparents about things from the past and how it relates to them.”

Then the generations came together to take quizzes about each other’s time periods on the digital platform Kahoot.

The students were asked to identify staples of the 20th century like Elvis Presley and the first moon landing, while grandparents had to figure out modern figures like Disney’s Phineas and Ferb and the popular app TikTok.

Principal Mandy Brown said the best part was that no student was left out.

“It’s fun to see that even though everybody’s grandparent may not have been able to come, grandparents are so accepting and will ‘adopt’ the other students,” Brown said.

Representatives from Grace United Methodist church and the NAACP were also on hand to fill in as stand-in grandparents, as well as other volunteers like parents of some of the teachers.

Coordinating Teacher Shontrece Dupre said the event came about last year as a way to get the community involved near the beginning of the year.

“We do a Bear Book celebration, but that’s at the end of the year,” Dupre said. “So we needed something else.”

In addition to giving the students a fun break from normal activities, the event doubles as a way to bring older generations back into the school for the first time in many years and show them what’s going on in modern education.

“It brings the community into our building to see the amazing things that are going on,” Vallery said.