RealitySpirituality Radio-Guests "Elder Chicks" Barbara Fliesher & Thelma Reese

Barbara M. Fleisher, EdD, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of San Francisco, is a retired professor of education. She has worn many hats in her life: public school teacher, learning disabilities/reading specialist, child advocate, college professor in San Francisco, Milwaukee, and Philadelphia, and author.

Thelma Reese, Ed.D., retired professor of English and of Education, created the Advisory Council for Hooked on Phonics and was its spokesperson in the '90's. In that role, and as director of the Mayor's Commission on Literacy for the City of Philadelphia, she appeared frequently on television and hosted a cable show in Philadelphia. She was a founder of Philadelphia Young Playwrights, chaired the Board of Children’s Literacy Initiative, and organized the World Symposium on Family Literacy at UNESCO in Paris in 1994.

Together, they have created and maintain the blog, ElderChicks.com. They appear monthly on Rick Toquigny’s Life Lessons Radio- "America's Favorite Lessons Show" (Denver, CO) as he plumbs the ideas and opinions of the ElderChicks. They have conducted many workshops for and about women in their 60s and beyond, and have interviewed over two hundred women about their concerns as they face the new challenges of this stage in their lives –a stage different in so many ways from those faced by the generation that preceded them.

As the authors of The New Senior Woman:  Reinventing the Years Beyond Mid-Life, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2014, Drs. Fleisher and Reese provide a framework for spirited discussion of the concerns they found in conversations with over 200 women who range in age from 62 to 100, and come from all walks of life.