On Jan. 10 students at Fountain Hills High School presented the final product of a cross-generational project that was months in the making.

The students presenting these projects were a part of the Storied Lives program, a collaboration between FHHS and Fountain View Village.

Storied Lives partners students from the high school with residents at Fountain View Village for a series of interviews where the residents answer students’ questions about their lives.

After conducting these interviews over the course of a couple months the students write a speech about their partner’s life and the lessons they took from the resident’s stories.

The students found a lot of value in the lessons they learned from listening to the older generation’s tales.

“It has been an amazing experience,” Kallista Johnson said. “I think it’s really important to see what life was like back then, from a first-person point of view, and I was so happy to get to learn more about that and get to almost experience it for myself.”

Many of the students also don’t get a chance to really talk with people that are outside of their own age group.

“It was really cool because, usually I don’t talk to a lot people aren’t in my generation except for my parents and grandparents,” Reagan Oliver said. “So it was nice to get outside of my bubble.”

While the students found the experience educational, residents at Fountain View found it enlightening. Answering questions about their lives showed them just how full their life has been so far.

“I think that everyone should do this once,” Fountain View resident Jackie Collier said. “And then the second time they do it, they can put in all the stuff they forget to put in the first time. It’s a thing you could do a lot of times and never have an end.”

Opening up and talking about your life in depth isn’t an easy thing to do and, while some of the partners hit it off right off the bat, others had to give it some time for connections to form.

Almost all the students agree, though, that you need to make that connection.

“For me, it was important to make the connection first and I think that was the hardest part,” Fatima Naranjo said. “But once we both became comfortable, it was easier to talk and it was easier to figure out what to base their story on.”

Naranjo and her partner became close enough that they would exchange letters in between their interviews, so she could get even more information about her partner’s life.

While the students were more than likely nervous when it came time for the presentation of their final speech to the class, their partners, who came to watch, were nothing less than delighted at what they heard.

“I thought it was great,” Marion Silbernagel said. “She (Oliver) had me crying.”

Storied Lives is a yearly program for students and residents.