Lara Chaffins

I've been in the life enrichment field for going on five and a half, almost six years now, and I've been in my current position for about four years. Before this, I was a preschool teacher and worked in early childhood education. I did behavioral therapy work and served as an assistant director for childcare facilities. I have two children, and it came to the point where I needed to find something that incorporated all of that experience, but without having children all the time, because I needed that patience for mine. Now I work with senior living, in skilled nursing facilities and assisted living facilities. My job is to find a reason to make them happy there, because there's not many people that enjoy being there. I still do a lot of teaching - I teach paint classes, I teach poker, I teach rummy. It's a lot of continued education at this age, because they are bored and they're ready to be stimulated again. That's why it was a great transition from teaching, because a lot of what I do is still working with curriculums to keep minds going. I work across five different buildings, trying to get five different buildings of people together in a community, which is definitely a challenge.