What is unusual about this picture?
Sherbrooke Community Centre Nursing Home in Saskatoon is the home to 263 high-needs residents. It’s also the site of an intergenerational school. Every year, after winning a city-wide lottery, a batch of sixth graders ditch the traditional classroom and spend a year attending school at Sherbrooke. Listen to this story from CBC’s Sunday Morning radio show here.
At Sherbrooke, there are no classrooms, no desks, and no blackboards. Students get together with their teachers in the chapel in the morning and again at noon, but the rest of the time they are free to go where they want, and sit with anyone they feel like talking to. The school is a life-changing experience for the elders as much as it is for the kids.
“If we didn’t see the kids, we would just be a bunch of old people in this building, and that is stark and it’s ugly. Without the kids, I just feel that a part of me dies,” one resident says.
In western Canada, Sherbrooke Community Centre Nursing Home is the first care home to register as an Eden Alternative ® home.
Another innovative model for us to consider….
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