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Two young journalists from the Invictus Scroll, Abi and Tayah from Year 7, report about their work with local elderly people in Croydon. To read more about their experience please see the December 2018 edition of our newsletter.

Young Meets Old, by Tayah and Abi, Year 7

At the end of November, Ms Davis took our 7X1 English class to the Mercedes Amos Day Centre at the basement of the New Testament church of God. We went to interview elderly Windrush migrants from the Caribbean and Africa.

Our class was very lucky as we were the first class to ever do this, but we didn’t just go there for fun. We had to take notes while interviewing the pensioners. Since then we have been working on turning these notes into biography writing. We will be returning to visit the Centre in January to present the migrants with their life stories written up into proper books!

Portraits

The class broke up into small groups to interview different people. One lucky group even got to interview the manager of the Day Centre! We all took notes and asked for pictures so we could paint the pensioners’ portraits and turn them into realistic books with lovely front covers. Hopefully in the new year we will publish them and go back to have a little party to celebrate. Our computing and art teachers have also agreed to help us make the books look fancy. Fingers crossed it goes well! 

One student involved in the project, Morgan aged 12, said he loved “meeting and interacting with the elderly”. He went on to describe what his elderly partner, Verel, said, “When she was young she got beaten by a stick!”  We all learnt that life has obviously changed a lot over time; many of the older people we interviewed used to get hit by teachers at school. Luckily that doesn’t happen at our Academy!

Treasure the experience

Another student, Aayan aged 11, said that the older lady he spoke to showed him some historical artefacts. After returning to the school he said: “I loved meeting the older people. My partner even managed to show me ancient Jamaican coins from when England controlled Jamaica.”

All of us are so grateful to the older people we talked to. It was so kind of the Centre to let us come into their lunch sessions together and share their stories. We have all learned so much and – with the books we’ve made – we will always remember and treasure the experience.