An older adult female in a wheelchair outside a building, wearing a pink sweater and glasses with a dark jacket layered under it. 10:28
PBS NewsHour channel icon PBS NewsHourOriginal creator 145K views Save

At 94, she teaches her old students again

Flossie Lewis once said that growing old is a state of mind, and that she still thought of herself as 15. At 94, she's back in front of a class. more

She said it at 91, on the PBS program Brief but Spectacular. The line reached a great many people. It also moved the program's director to bring Flossie back together with the students she once taught.

Flossie came of age in Brooklyn during the war, when a young woman didn't have many choices. Teaching was one of the jobs open to women, and it gave them a voice in the community. Flossie found hers at the front of a classroom.

The reunion takes place at Lowell High School in the Bay Area, where she used to teach. Many of her former students turn up to see her. And Flossie has a lesson ready for them.

An older woman with glasses and gray hair, in a black jacket with a red pin, speaks. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Back at Lowell High School, Flossie has a class planned for her former students.

The question is whether Bob Dylan deserved the Nobel Prize in Literature. She opens the floor and lets her old class argue it out, because free debate is how she likes to teach. Her students, grown now, are drawn in by her ideas.

An older adult female in a wheelchair outside a building, wearing a pink sweater and glasses with a dark jacket layered under it. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Flossie Lewis once said that growing old is a state of mind, and that she still thought of herself as 15.

Then the talk turns to what she gave them. Her former students tell her how far her teaching reached past the classroom. She helped one of them through depression and inspired another toward architecture.

A man with dark hair and a beard looks up and to the side, his mouth slightly open. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Her former students tell her how her lessons shaped their lives.

Most teachers never get to hear thanks like that. Flossie hears it at 94, sitting among the people she taught.

An older woman with glasses and gray hair sits in a black top with red accents, looking ahead. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Flossie sits among the people she once taught and hears what she meant to them.

She calls growing old a state of mind. In a room full of her old students, it's easy to take her at her word.