Brainerd Students Create ‘Life Storybooks’ for Edgewood Vista Residents

Students at Brainerd Learning Center are used to writing reports about the usual subjects like science, social studies, and English. But their latest assignment had them focusing on some history right in their backyard at Edgewood Vista Healthcare.

“This semester we have been coming here every week, meeting with our resident, asking them questions,” explained Brainerd Learning Center senior Zaius Langhoff. “I definitely liked some of the more philosophical questions to ask. Then at the end, we threw together a nice little scrapbook for our resident.”

Students were matched with senior living residents at Edgewood to create a life storybook about the people that live there.

“My nephew did this years ago in one of his classes in a different school, and he was telling me about it and I’m like, ‘Hey, that’s really cool. Maybe that’s something that I could start here in Brainerd,'” said Jana Stroot, a teacher at Brainerd Learning Center who served as advisor for the project. “It was just something that I just really fell in love with, and I thought, ‘This has value, and I want to bring it to the Brainerd School District.'”

For Edgewood residents, the books let them take a welcome trip down memory lane.

“They ask questions that made go back to my childhood and come up with answers, and it made it really interesting,” said resident Gaylord Saetre. “It just made me relive some things that happened, some which I was happy and some which I wasn’t, but it’s all part of life.”

And the students took home lessons beyond those they learned in the classroom.

“One thing he said was, ‘You can’t judge a person’s success off of their money,’ or stuff like that, by how happy they are in everything they’ve done in their lifetime,” added Langhoff. “It’s very nice to come here and see someone else’s perspective. Another set of eyes always helps someone.”

According to Stroot, the relationships built by doing the assignment will last way past graduation.

“Initially, when the kids take this class, they’re nervous. They have anxiety. They don’t really know what to expect. And by the end of the class, they ask me, like, ‘Can I go back and visit them without even being part of the class?’ And so it’s kind of the friendship that they have, the bonds that they create and the friendships that they make.”

This was the second year in a row that Brainerd Learning Center students participated in the activity. The program is intended to return for a third time when the next school year kicks off.