This Preschool Inside a Nursing Home Will Bring You to Tears

What happens when the elderly are paired with preschoolers in one place, day after day? Magic — that's what happens.

Filmmaker Evan Briggs spent the 2012-2013 school year filming Present Perfect, capturing the dynamic between the preschoolers at the Intergenerational Learning Center located inside of the Providence Mount St. Vincent Nursing Home in Seattle. Every day, the combined group spends their time together "collecting happy" and soaking in everything the other has to offer.

Many elderly residents inside nursing homes are likely to experience some type of social isolation, which can be linked to loneliness and depression, even physical and mental decline — a fact that inspired this idea of a multigenerational learning center. Briggs described the dynamic inside the nursing home: "It was a depressing scene. As soon as the kids walked in for art or music or making sandwiches for the homeless or whatever the project that day was, the residents came alive."

She said that the little moments between the kids and the nursing home residents were "sweet, some awkward, some funny — all of them poignant and heartbreakingly real." Briggs hopes that her film will help to start a conversation about integrating the elderly into society and that this concept can be replicated and expand to other schools and nursing homes across the nation.