The following are suggestions for how lifespan and aging concepts can be integrated into secondary classroom instruction.  Classroom teachers can use these ideas to trigger other creative activities.

The Arts

• Show students how to draw persons of different ages, using examples of older persons in social contexts with various activities and expressions.
• Provide students with a list of long-lived artists, poets, musicians, photographers, architects, dancers, or actors.  Have students note the age at which important accomplishments were made.
• Invite older artists to class to display, discuss, and demonstrate techniques of their art form.
• Have small groups of students develop hypothetical, but realistic problem situations between youths and elders at home or at work, then act out mini-dramas in which they present the problems and their proposed solutions.
• Invite older artists to class to display, discuss, and demonstrate techniques of their art form.
  

Business Education

• Invite a housing developer, travel agent, and home care provider to explain what they do to meet the needs of older and younger persons.
• Demonstrate and practice effective customer service communication practices when working with older customers.
• Discuss possible cases of age discrimination in the workplace and how to avoid them.
• Ask students to develop a non-ageist advertisement for a service or product that could be used by older adults.
  

Health Education, Science, and Family and Consumer Sciences (Home Economics)

• Have students diagram the life cycles of several different species, such as flies, salmon, horses, and sea turtles.  Show their stages of life and how much of the total lifespan is devoted to each stage.  Compare these to humans and discuss implications.
• Have students list ways major systems and organs of the body are affected with age when a person follows good health habits as opposed to poor health habits.  Differentiate between the effects of age and the effects of disuse, disease and injury.
• Explore potential careers in which scientific knowledge about aging would be needed.
• Discuss reasons for hearing loss, such as the potential dangers of loud concerts, machines, and headphones.
• Have students practice good communication techniques with persons who are hearing impaired.
• Ask students to research ways in which scientific advancements such as food production, nutrition, sanitation, medical technology, have increased life expectancy.
• List and compare chronic and acute diseases commonly associated with younger and older persons.  Emphasize that diseases are not a normal part of aging and that medical science is seeking cures for what was once considered inevitable during later life.
• Invite community health and social service professionals to explain resources for persons of different ages.
• Invite local health professionals to explain what young people can do to avoid health problems in later life.
• Have students research and select an Elderhostel program and/or Adventure Travel for 50+ they would like to take when they are older adults.
  

Language Arts

• Assign literature involving inter-generational relationships and discuss how these relationships compare to the experiences of those in the class.
• Compare older characters in popular fairy tales and nursery rhymes with contemporary cartoons and television programs.
• Have students interview older people, take notes of the interview, and then use the notes to write character sketches of the persons interviewed.
• Compare older characters in classic literature with contemporary images of aging.  Discuss how story plots and character development might be different in a modern setting.
• Identify in contemporary movies examples of interesting or overly-stereotyped older adults.
• Practice non-ageist journalism when writing about events involving older adults.
• Discuss connotations of words used to name or describe older adults such as the elderly, senior citizens, golden-agers, and older adults.
  

Mathematics, Economics

• Compare the total capital at age 65 of some total dollars invested beginning at age 25 versus at age 45.
• Use problem-solving exercises on spending and savings that older and younger persons might experience.
• Use other age-related data, such as age demographics, changing lifespan, Social Security finances, to devise problems by which students simultaneously practice math skills and learn about aging.
• Take students to an old cemetery to gather data for constructing graphs of birth and death rates.  Have students note changes over time and possible implications of the data.
  

Physical Education

• Invite healthy, active retired athletes to class to discuss any limitations their health changes have placed on their abilities and how they work with limitations to maintain active lives.
• Invite speakers from Senior Olympics or senior ski clubs to teach students fitness exercises.  Invite nursing home residents or physical therapists to demonstrate appropriate fitness exercises for persons with physical disabilities.

Social Studies

• Have students research how certain major acts of Congress, such as Social Security Act, Older Americans Act, Age Discrimination in Employment Act, have affected the lives of older Americans.
• Have students learn about the legislative process by tracing a major bill having to do with aging from introduction in the House or Senate until its passage or defeat.
• Introduce and explore the topics of ageism (age prejudice) and gerontophobia (fear of aging) by gathering and analyzing advertisements, cartoons, comic strips, birthday cards, book illustrations, and common sayings.
• Introduce the concept of cohort differences by inviting retirees of different ages to discuss their experiences during momentous historical periods of change such as war, immigration, economic recession, and civil rights movement.
• Have students compare the roles of older adults in various cultures in the United States and other countries.
  

Technology Education

• Have students investigate ways businesses are using technology to market to older adults.
• Invite older adults who belong to computer using groups to discuss how computer technology has changed the way they communicate and/or do business.
• Create a pen-pal program by e-mail with older adults who are on the Internet.
• Have students practice accessing information over the Internet by locating resources and organizations serving older adults.
• Discuss ways in which new technology can help persons of all ages with hearing and vision loss.

Excerpt from Couper, D.  & Pratt, F.  Teaching about Aging: Enriching Lives across the Life Span.  National Retired Teachers Association and National Academy for Teaching and Learning about Aging, 1997.