Students in the recreation parks administration-therapeutic recreation (TR) major visited Luther Oaks Senior Living and Retirement Facility as part of their Facilitation Techniques Class program. The visits, which took place every Monday for three consecutive weeks between October 30 and November 13, were an opportunity for the students to practice recreational therapy in the “My Tapestry” memory care unit of the facility.
The unit offers special care to residents who have Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia and require interventions to help them achieve a healthy leisure lifestyle.
Speaking on the interventions that they practiced, Paige McKinnery, a TR student who participated in the program said, “We used different interventions to help with short-term memory recall, socialization between other residents, fine motor skills, and reminiscence on earlier times in their lives. These include bibliotherapy, nature interventions and expressive arts.”
The program also aimed at pushing the students out of their comfort zone by helping them plan and execute their plans. To achieve this, topics were selected by their professor, and the students were tasked with planning specific activities that were in line with the themes.
During the first week, the theme for the student’s visit was “expressive arts” which was followed by “bibliotherapy” and “horticulture,” respectively, for the next two weeks.
Julie Auxier, another participant of the program mentioned that, “We planned a lot of activities intentionally. For expressive arts, we planned for the residents to make collages by using scissors, paintbrushes, and glue. This would help them practice their motor skills.
“We also had used aromatherapy practices to enhance their sense of smell with flowers, fruits, and vegetables. Additionally, we had nature guessing games that were intended to help with short-term memory recall.”
To incorporate bibliotherapy, the students selected activities that entailed the residents writing stories and journaling to help with reminiscence.
The students closely monitored the residents’ responses to measure the success of their interventions. To aid this, the group of 10 students were subdivided into groups of three in order to easily manage the group of 18 residents who attended the program.
“We used observation as our success measure. For instance, once the residents responded correctly during the nature-guessing game, we then knew that they could listen and understand,” Auxier said, “Some of the residents could understand better than others, while others needed redirection, but we soon came to learn that every resident has their own unique strengths.”
Rachel Smith, the TR professor who coordinated the program alongside Jill Martinez, the certified therapeutic recreation specialist (CTRS) at Luther Oaks, noted that, “The students got to practice TR skills and the residents had opportunities to be involved.”
Like her peers, McKinnery hopes to become a CTRS in the future. For this reason, she was thrilled to get the outside-the-classroom experience.
“Getting the experience in the real world is important because we can then apply this knowledge and take it to a future career,” McKinnery said, “Personally, it was also a rewarding experience for me because it helped me to connect with people that I would not be able to connect with before.”
The coordinators of the program hope to extend the program so that more students and residents can become beneficiaries.
“This is the first semester of the program and I expect we will be back again,” Smith said.
Join the School of Kinesiology and Recreation if you are interested in the therapeutic recreation major.
