Working With Older People Has Been a Humbling And Rewarding Experience

As a teacher who works in special education, some people think I’m some sort of guru because I know how to navigate the basics of Google Docs, Google Sheets, as well as a lot of other websites and databases we use at work. I took a LinkedIn proficiency test in Excel. I failed miserably, which shows that my knowledge of Excel is simply basic or what I learned in high school and college. Still, I’m reminded that compared to a lot of my co-workers, who are immigrants from foreign countries or did not have the luxury to not go to a college as privileged and elite as mine, did not get the same education in technology as I did. But it’s not these colleagues who I find really struggle to use Microsoft Word, Excel, or Google Docs or Sheets. It’s mostly colleagues who are older than me, who are usually in their late 40s, 50s, or even older who really struggle. In education, there’s a huge age range of teachers. There are people as young as 21, and as old as their late 60s (in my experience). I once asked one of my college professors, who just turned 70, how I could navigate working with older people better while honoring my conditioned value (as an Asian person) of respecting my elders. “Repeat yourself as many times as you can,” he said. “Never feel like you’re talking down to them.” <a href="https://ryanfan.medium.com/working-with-older-people-has-been-a-humbling-and-rewarding-experience-73a6f3f01bd7">Visit Now</a>