Students bond with seniors to share stories for the ages
Cameron Poirier tells a story from Winston Lyford about trying to make a good impression during a track race during an intergenerational storytelling event on Thursday, June 11. Photos by Nick Mossman
Building bridges between generations is a theme of the program.
A display of old photos sat at the entrance to the storytelling room. 
Students told stories to a packed audience. 
State Rep. Norman Orrall tells a story of his own and presents a citation from the Massachusetts House of Representatives to Karen Chace and Andrea Lovett for the storytelling program. 
Chloe Kupiec and Amelia Brick share Deborah Kranefuss's story about trying to travel to California. 
Older residents sat on the right side of the room, waiting for students to tell the stories they shared. 
Gabriel Brick tells a story titled "The Blue Diamond."
Cameron Poirier tells a story from Winston Lyford about trying to make a good impression during a track race during an intergenerational storytelling event on Thursday, June 11. Photos by Nick Mossman
Building bridges between generations is a theme of the program.
A display of old photos sat at the entrance to the storytelling room.
Students told stories to a packed audience.
State Rep. Norman Orrall tells a story of his own and presents a citation from the Massachusetts House of Representatives to Karen Chace and Andrea Lovett for the storytelling program.
Chloe Kupiec and Amelia Brick share Deborah Kranefuss's story about trying to travel to California.
Older residents sat on the right side of the room, waiting for students to tell the stories they shared.
Gabriel Brick tells a story titled "The Blue Diamond."
LAKEVILLE — In a packed room of older adults, children and their families at the Lakeville Public Library, students took the microphone to share the stories of those "enriched by age" during the Once Upon a Generation storytelling program.
During the storytelling performance on Thursday, June 11, each student stood in front of the room and retold stories about a track race, traveling to California and even about what happens after sticking a button up their nose among others. Each story was passed down from a local older person to Lakeville's youngest.
On the left side of the room, students sat ready to share the stories they learned. On the right side sat a group of older residents ready to listen to theirs get told.
According to organizers Karen Chace and Andrea Lovett, student storytellers as young as fourth graders and as old as high school seniors are paired with older residents in Lakeville and Freetown to perform stories from their lives. Chace said that pairings are based on personality and story content.
After being paired, students interviewed and got to know the seniors whose stories they shared. Students then prepared for eight weeks to best share the stories of their new older acquaintances, taking some creative liberties.
Students told each story in their own voice, from the perspective of the older person that the story came from.
"It's a little twist on most intergenerational storytelling," Lovett said.
Lovett said that students are making "real deep connections" with the older adults.
Cameron Poirier, 17, recently graduated from Apponequet Regional High School and said he wrote his college admission essay on the storytelling program.
"I have gained so much from engaging with the seniors and kind of filling that gap between my generation and then two generations ahead of us," Poirier said, adding that he learned about history and "life lessons" from people in the program.
In the fall, Poirier will attend Middlebury College in Vermont and plans to study economics. He said the storytelling program has improved his public speaking skills and that he plans to go into the business or finance field someday.
"Learning to engage with the seniors and then telling their stories in front of an audience has helped me a lot," he said.
Connecting the generations was a key theme of the program.
"Everyone has a story and storytelling helps bridge the generation gap," Lovett said. "And so, once you know somebody's story, any preconceived notions disappear."
