Fourth-grade students from Exton Elementary spent this spring sitting across from senior residents at Barclay Friends in West Chester, asking questions about the Great Depression, school segregation and the small details of lives lived across decades. Then they turned those conversations into personalized books and hand-delivered them in June.

The program, called "Voices of Past, Stories for the Future," paired each fourth-grader one-on-one with a Barclay Friends resident. Students visited the senior living community at 700 N. Franklin St. in April and May for interviews, then returned in June to present each resident with a bound book chronicling their life story, along with flowers and handwritten poems.

Barclay Friends, a Quaker-rooted nonprofit established in 1893, has a track record of intergenerational programming. The community previously ran a pen pal program pairing residents with second-graders at Starkweather Elementary School. The oral history project marks a deeper collaboration, with students spending multiple visits building relationships with their assigned partners.

Before the visits began, Barclay Friends staff led sensitivity training sessions to help students understand the physical and emotional effects of aging. According to Barclay Friends, the training helped students approach conversations with greater confidence.

The interviews gave students firsthand accounts of historical events that supplemented their classroom curriculum. Residents shared memories spanning decades of American life, and students shaped those stories into narrative keepsakes their partners could hold onto.

Exton Elementary, part of the West Chester Area School District, enrolls about 563 students in grades K-5 and has been in operation since approximately 1942. The district serves roughly 12,000 students across 17 schools in central Chester County.

No announcement has been made about whether the program will return for the 2026-27 school year.