Write a story based on on the relationship of senior citizens and children.
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The Grace Living Center, a nursing home in Jenks, Oklahoma, hosts 170 residents. It's also home to a kindergarten and two pre-K classes, part of the Jenks Public Schools. Students call the elders "grandmas" and "grandpas."
At the same time every morning, Paul Bookout sits impatiently in his wheelchair, looking out the front door of the Grace Living Center. He's not waiting for family visitors, and he's not longing to be away from this nursing home. He's waiting for the children. Just before 9 a.m., a stream of five-year-olds comes through the door, calling out greetings and hugging their "Grandpa Paul." Though Bookout can't speak as a result of a stroke, he points and smiles with delight as he follows these kindergartners to the door of their classroom, here in the nursing home.
The Grace Living Center is home to two classrooms of about 60 kindergarten and prekindergarten students, as well as to 170 elders, who are "grandmas" and "grandpas" to the students. Kids attend the center in lieu of the first two grades at another school in the district, then switch at the start of first grade.
Far from just a heartwarming partnership, the school housed in the GLC provides students with daily mentors in their academic and social development, yielding proven results in reading and vocabulary. Its success has inspired the opening of a similar school in Kansas and is a model for intergenerational learning, even in more traditional settings.
The partnership came about in 1998, when Don Greiner, president of an Oklahoma nursing home chain, started construction on a facility in Jenks. Noticing a school district-owned daycare center next door, Greiner approached the district about upgrading the playground, thinking that the sight of kids playing could uplift his residents. The idea of a collaboration snowballed as the GLC and Jenks Public Schools found that their goals aligned.

Credit: Darren Parker
Ageless Friendship: "Grandpa" Paul Bookout welcomes kindergartners to school at Grace Living Center.
The GLC works to eliminate loneliness, helplessness, and boredom in aging populations; the district's curricular vision, says Shan Glandon, director of curriculum and instruction, is "to make learning as engaging and purposeful as we can," focusing on integrating content with real-world ties. Eventually, all parties agreed to create two classrooms inside the nursing home; the GLC paid about $200,000 for construction and leased the space to the district for $1 a year.
School and nursing home are integrated in both physical design and curricular planning. Classrooms wrap around the beauty shop and between the GLC's atrium and dining hall. Sliding glass doors open onto the hallway, and pane-free windows allow children's voices to float through the home. Parents drop kids off at the GLC's front door: They snake through the home to get to class. And elders maneuver their wheelchairs up to huge windows to watch kids play on the playground, or go out to the play area themselves.
To ensure curricular ties, the GLC employs a full-time liaison -- the energetic Elaine Arnold -- who identifies mentoring opportunities for every interested resident and is present any time kids are with elders. The district allocates time for Glandon to meet regularly with Arnold and the teachers, and every four to six weeks, the group reviews the curriculum taught in all 30 of the district's kindergarten classes, identifies unit objectives, discusses skills they should reinforce, and brainstorms activities in which grandmas and grandpas can help students learn.
The curricular hallmark of the partnership is "book buddies," which pairs rotating groups of elders and kindergarten students who read to one another for about 30 minutes several times a week. Grandpa Charles "Charlie" Lamson, who moved to the GLC after suffering a stroke, has participated for about a year. "I always start out saying, 'Are you going to read to me?' " says Grandpa Charlie, a tall man wearing a Tulsa Drillers baseball cap. "It's such a good feeling to just listen, read along, and help with words," he explains. "I know how important it is to learn to read, and if I can read to them now, that's a big help down the line."
At the same time every morning, Paul Bookout sits impatiently in his wheelchair, looking out the front door of the Grace Living Center. He's not waiting for family visitors, and he's not longing to be away from this nursing home. He's waiting for the children. Just before 9 a.m., a stream of five-year-olds comes through the door, calling out greetings and hugging their "Grandpa Paul." Though Bookout can't speak as a result of a stroke, he points and smiles with delight as he follows these kindergartners to the door of their classroom, here in the nursing home.
The Grace Living Center is home to two classrooms of about 60 kindergarten and prekindergarten students, as well as to 170 elders, who are "grandmas" and "grandpas" to the students. Kids attend the center in lieu of the first two grades at another school in the district, then switch at the start of first grade.
Far from just a heartwarming partnership, the school housed in the GLC provides students with daily mentors in their academic and social development, yielding proven results in reading and vocabulary. Its success has inspired the opening of a similar school in Kansas and is a model for intergenerational learning, even in more traditional settings.
The partnership came about in 1998, when Don Greiner, president of an Oklahoma nursing home chain, started construction on a facility in Jenks. Noticing a school district-owned daycare center next door, Greiner approached the district about upgrading the playground, thinking that the sight of kids playing could uplift his residents. The idea of a collaboration snowballed as the GLC and Jenks Public Schools found that their goals aligned.

Credit: Darren Parker
Ageless Friendship: "Grandpa" Paul Bookout welcomes kindergartners to school at Grace Living Center.
The GLC works to eliminate loneliness, helplessness, and boredom in aging populations; the district's curricular vision, says Shan Glandon, director of curriculum and instruction, is "to make learning as engaging and purposeful as we can," focusing on integrating content with real-world ties. Eventually, all parties agreed to create two classrooms inside the nursing home; the GLC paid about $200,000 for construction and leased the space to the district for $1 a year.
School and nursing home are integrated in both physical design and curricular planning. Classrooms wrap around the beauty shop and between the GLC's atrium and dining hall. Sliding glass doors open onto the hallway, and pane-free windows allow children's voices to float through the home. Parents drop kids off at the GLC's front door: They snake through the home to get to class. And elders maneuver their wheelchairs up to huge windows to watch kids play on the playground, or go out to the play area themselves.
To ensure curricular ties, the GLC employs a full-time liaison -- the energetic Elaine Arnold -- who identifies mentoring opportunities for every interested resident and is present any time kids are with elders. The district allocates time for Glandon to meet regularly with Arnold and the teachers, and every four to six weeks, the group reviews the curriculum taught in all 30 of the district's kindergarten classes, identifies unit objectives, discusses skills they should reinforce, and brainstorms activities in which grandmas and grandpas can help students learn.
The curricular hallmark of the partnership is "book buddies," which pairs rotating groups of elders and kindergarten students who read to one another for about 30 minutes several times a week. Grandpa Charles "Charlie" Lamson, who moved to the GLC after suffering a stroke, has participated for about a year. "I always start out saying, 'Are you going to read to me?' " says Grandpa Charlie, a tall man wearing a Tulsa Drillers baseball cap. "It's such a good feeling to just listen, read along, and help with words," he explains. "I know how important it is to learn to read, and if I can read to them now, that's a big help down the line."
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