Second-Graders Visit OHCA Member in School Pilot Program

Second-Graders Visit OHCA Member in School Pilot Program For the past month, a group of second-grade students from Drake Elementary School has been visiting OHCA Member Crystal Waters Retirement Community in Strongville, Ohio each Wednesday as part of an intergenerational learning program, a pilot project the school district is pushing to provide an alternative way for students to learn. Called "The Story of Our Lives," the program fulfills numerous academic requirements, from interviewing to research ideas to social studies. Each Wednesday morning, the students are taken by bus from their school to the nearby Crystal Waters facility. They're each matched up, one-on-one, with a senior resident in the activities room of the retirement center. The students interact with their senior for several hours each visit and create a living biography. Crystal Waters raised money through a spaghetti dinner fundraiser to cover all costs of the weekly outing. Kids and seniors in both groups look forward to the weekly meetings. The school district hopes to continue the "Story of Our Lives" program next school-year and invited other districts to adopt similar intergenerational learning projects. The story was recently featured by ABC Channel 5 in Cleveland.

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