Voice over 0:00
This is Health on the Plains, a podcast about rural communities, rural life, and the many factors influencing the health and well-being of rural Kansans. Health on the Plains is a podcast from the Kansas Health Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan educational organization committed to informing policy and improving health in Kansas, through honest, nuanced conversations with leaders and doers from a variety of backgrounds. The Health on the Plains podcast offers unique insights into rural health challenges in Kansas and shines a light on the people and organizations working to make their communities healthier, more vibrant places to call home.
Wyatt Beckman 0:42
Well, welcome back to another episode of Health on the Plains. I’m your host, Wyatt Beckman. Today we’re in Logan, Kansas, in the northwest part of the state, at the Logan Intergenerational Family Education Center, also known as the Logan LIFE Center. The center opened in the fall of 2024 but is the culmination of years of effort and collaboration. The Center is a one of a kind, innovative and dynamic, intergenerational facility that brings together two groups; students at public school here in Logan, and residents of a local Manor nursing home facility. The goal, among other things, of the center, is to create a state-of-the-art intergenerational facility to meet multiple community needs; students, residents and the community at large. Here to talk about the center are two of its leaders and founders and, and creators, Principal David Kirkendall and Teresa McComb, who serves as the Administrator for Logan Manor. David and Teresa, thank you so much for having us out here, for, for joining us, for Health on the Plains.
David Kirkendall 1:55
Thank you for having us.
Teresa McComb 1:57
Thanks for being here.
Wyatt Beckman 1:57
So we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk a lot about what you all have created here. And we’re sitting in one of the, the new spaces that you created, a community space. I can see Manor care over there. There’s school behind me. You’ve created this amazing facility and a company with all sorts of programs. But before we dive into everything you’re doing now, I want to go back. Let’s, let’s sort of go back, and initially, David, where’s this idea come from? When did you start thinking about something like this? Where’s the, or tell me about the origin of this, this idea.
David Kirkendall 2:34
It, it started back when the tornado hit Greensburg. When that hit, I was a mayor of a local town fairly close to that, and we sent down, there’s a municipality agreement, and we sent down workers, trucks and equipment to help rebuild Greensburg. And when they started to rebuild it, it just, something didn’t sit right with me. I liked what they were going to do. I liked what they were wanting to do, but I knew the town was devastated. And they had a hospital at one area, nursing home in another, school. And for me, I started looking at, as a taxpayer, what could we do, or what could they do to combine all that together into a facility that would meet all needs? And so I was doing some farming at the time, and sitting on the tractor at night, I would sit there and think, well, if I ever had a situation where I could build, and cost wasn’t an issue, or facility wasn’t an issue, what would I build? And since I had no money, it wasn’t going to happen at that time, money wasn’t an issue. So I could just dream as big as I wanted, and I started looking at, how could we put a facility like a nursing home, a wellness center, a storm shelter and a school all together? And what would that look like? What, what type of activities would we do? And so I ended up becoming a principal. Went to my first town I was a principal at, and I pitched this kind of to them. They had some different ideas, instead. I came here, and after about two months of being here, one of my school board members came to me and said, “Hey, our east building is falling apart. It’s, it’s in rough shape. We’re running out of room. The community wants a Community Wellness Center, which we don’t have the money for, but would like. And the nursing home is struggling a little bit with antiquated equipment and lines and, and infrastructure. Would you have any kind of an idea of something we could do?” And I said, “Well, as a matter of fact, I do.” And we started working on that for about a year and a half to two years. And we brought Teresa on board as we kind of, the first designs were just, how would this work? What would it look like? Explain, explain the detail of, of this concept, because, again, it’s completely out of the blue type of concept. We did some research. We found that there were other facilities that had a preschool in a nursing home, up to, I believe, second grade at that time, in a nursing home, but there was nothing that had the concept preK-12. And that was important to me, because I felt even past second grade, there was so much value that could be done in this, that nobody’s really sat down, and we have just barely scratched the surface of what possibilities lie within that. And the biggest part I had to do was, to show the educational value, because you could build any concept and put a school in it. But is it really, truly what’s best for the students on education? And so that was my focus, and working with somebody like Teresa, to sit down in her focus, being the life of the residents, their well-being, their care, their spirit. Well, that’s different than what I need to focus on, which is getting students to be well-rounded, students that can go off to college and do it. So if we could come together and, and we spent several years working on that part of the concept, before we even got into structural of the building. We spent about two to three years on that, and then we spent about five or six years, just in structure, looking at the facility. There’ll be a lot of things we’ll show as we go through, that Teresa and I were pretty, pretty hardcore on with demands. For example, you can look at things like ceiling tile and there are no pic- it should be no, no texture on our ceiling tiles in any of the rooms. Because we looked at it as, in 20 years, if I have to, if I have a water leak and I have to replace a ceiling tile, I can replace it with a plain ceiling tile instead of a textured one that’s not going to match. We wanted paint sources that we could replicate locally. We wanted floor tile that was uniform throughout, so that we could buy an extra palette. We, we had to go through all of those little aspects before we really even got to the paperwork of design. So it was just the concept of it. So that kind of took us from idea to plans.
Wyatt Beckman 7:24
Many multiple years, a lot of thoughts, a lot of careful planning. I wouldn’t think about the ceiling tiles in 20 years and, but it’s maximizing this opportunity and the resource. But I want to. Teresa, let’s go back to you. This, if you can go back in time, this, when you first hear, hear this idea, you, you’re working at the the manor care, as David said. You have some facility needs. You have a job to do to make the best possible care for your residents. What’s your, what’s your reaction?
Teresa McComb 7:59
It was, we had already been working on, you know, we knew that we needed a new nursing home. We knew that ours was not going to meet our needs very quickly. Electrical is not up to, you know, any type of standards when it was built. People didn’t have TVs, computers, laptops, all the things. So we were well aware that our building needed to be replaced or significantly upgraded. So we had been playing with the idea of, you know, building a new nursing home. And we are about 75% Medicaid funding, so it is very difficult with Medicaid funding to, like, make any kind of a big purchase, so we would not have been able to just take out a loan and build a new building. So we had been working on just getting a plan in action of how we could build a nursing home. And then when they came to us with this idea, it seemed like a no-brainer. The residents loved having the kids in there. They light up when they come in. They are so excited. It makes their day a little bit better. So it was a pretty easy decision that we brought to the board and talked it through, and everybody thought that it was a fantastic idea. And just, there’s so many opportunities that we haven’t even dove into yet of what we can do, how we can make these relationships grow and nurture them as we go forward. So it was very exciting. It was a super long process, but I think we came out in the end, with an amazing facility that will last for years to come and just will benefit this town, the community and all of our kids and residents.
Wyatt Beckman 9:51
Absolutely and the facility will enable so many activities, so many programs, so many services. And I want to talk about those, but I want to dwell just a little bit longer on, on building up the plans and the ideas. This is a huge investment, not only for the school, for the manor care, for the community as a whole. How did that go, talking to community members, talking to board members. A principal, talking to your school board, or talking to your other other teachers? How did it go? For lack of a better word, selling this idea to the community, when this idea doesn’t, there’s not a good example to point to and say, hey, that’s what we’re doing. That’s what it looks like. How did that go?
David Kirkendall 10:43
There were some struggles with it. Some concern was there would be a bond issue. This was all done without a bond issue. We have a local foundation, the Dane G Hansen Foundation, and they fronted the money. They even had to sell it to their board. Even though it’s a local foundation, at first we didn’t have the votes on their board. I think they had to work with them quite a bit, but they wanted a commitment from the community as well, of a million dollars from a community of 450 people. And so we, we did. We had town hall meetings. We had them down in the auditorium. We visited. We showed them some ideas, some plans. There was some concern. I remember we did some surveys that were sent out from people on, do we want this? And concerns were simple things like, well, not all old people like kids. Well, granted, they don’t have to participate if they don’t. And what happens if a kid gets close to a resident they pass on? Well, that’s a life lesson that you know kids are going to have to learn, and it might be easier to work with them on that, with someone that’s not necessarily related. We sold it as we talked to them about the numbers of employees the nursing home has with the school, we’re the two largest employers in town. And that some of the employees, their kids are here. Some of the grandparents are in here. So there’s, you know, you’re going to be able to come to work and see your child, or the kids are going to be able to see great grandma in the nursing home. They’re, the land. This is sitting on our track area, our field events and our baseball field, is where we built this. That was land the school had. So the school had to get on board to give up this land and then find new locations. We had to buy new land to move our other facility. And there was quite a bit with that. And the community, the community was very supportive, but there was a lot of concerns and questions. We kind of kept it on the down low as we started, because there was so much minor details that were major items, like, where would you build it? How would you build it? Where would you get the finance, how much local support? That we had to work out before we brought everybody in to decide, should this room be white or should it be yellow, should it be blue? People wanted to get in on that part of it, and there was so much more structural and integrity items we had to worry about on the building.
Teresa McComb 13:12
And I think there was a lot of like regulatory concerns as well.
David Kirkendall 13:16
Correct.
Teresa McComb 13:16
Schools have a lot of rules. Nursing homes have a lot of rules. Their rules don’t necessarily jive together. So it was very important to like have a distinction of which portion of the building was like, who was responsible for it. There was concerns with health issues. As far as you know, if the kids get sick, if the resident gets, residents get sick, how do we keep everybody as safe as we can through cold and flu season? And we just had a lot of discussions about that. And I think if we asked any of our residents, if, like, during COVID times when we had to lock everybody out, would you rather be exposed to illness and see children and see your families, or would you rather be safe? I think every single one of them would have picked to see, you know the kids and their loved ones. So I think the risk of being exposed is definitely worth it, like they’re willing to take that risk. And everybody gets sick, like keeping certain individuals out isn’t going to help anything.
David Kirkendall 14:12
We ran under COVID with the old facility and the wings. I lent a wagon to the nursing home to be able to haul stuff around. And it just wasn’t convenient, wasn’t, it wasn’t feasible. In this type of a situation, the way we built this building, that we took that into effect as well. And so we could have an isolation wing, if need be, or two, and, and go that way. We also looked at rooms beyond COVID. What if it was a natural disaster, and you need to set up a Red Cross area? Well, we have a Red Cross area. We have showers, we have things to set up for a neighboring community, if they were destroyed or if they had issues. So we, we had to sell all that to the community and show them what the plans were, to really get them to come in and, and invest money into it. And that first night, we had some people invest and we kept a thermometer ticker downtown, and we slowly watched the community get up to 960,000, and they said, close enough, and we went ahead with it, so worked out pretty good.
Wyatt Beckman 15:23
That’s that’s really impressive. And I imagine had to involve so much persistence from both of you, and a lot of people. We’re talking about multiple years, right? That this took place.
David Kirkendall 15:40
The big support we had was from Dane G Hansen, and at the time they were President Brien Stockman, who his wife, was on the board at the time for the school. But what helped us with them is they saw the vision as well, and so he worked with his board to get them on, on board with it and the ideas behind it. But Dane G Hansen works for Northwest Kansas, so they built the engineering school or remodeled it in Manhattan and down at Hays. So they had the connections to the items that, that’s not our area, on construction. So they were able to bring in people like McCownGordon [construction company], HGF [HFG architect], that that built this, that designed it. They gave us that support that we normally wouldn’t have had or been able to with, with just us going out, trying to find people locally. We needed that big resource. And they, they took, I think, more of an active role than they do in a lot of their other projects, because they wanted a, they wanted a centerpiece for the Dane G Hansen, for Dane G Hansen, for him, a legacy project. And they felt this would do that, so.
Wyatt Beckman 16:54
Absolutely. Well, let’s, let’s bring it forward and, and talk about some of the benefits that you’re seeing. One of the things that, that we wrestle with at KHI, and that my colleague, Emma, who goes with me on these, on these podcast recordings, works on, is our Age-Friendly Kansas initiative. And that initiative works to, among a lot of other things, work to make environments where older adults can thrive. And one of the issues that comes up when we talk about older adults thriving and staying engaged in their community and living the lives they want to as they age, is isolation and loneliness. And David, you’ve shared the experience you had as a kid. Going with your mom and she did some maintenance work at a nursing home. And, and you said you would see the residents waiting for someone to visit, and often no one would show up.
David Kirkendall 17:59
Correct.
Wyatt Beckman 17:59
And that struck me as something, even as a kid, you were kind of tuned into this need for connection and the value of connection and collaboration. And connection and collaboration that goes across ages and across different groups. And then we fast forward, and now you’ve had a role in helping build that. And Teresa you mentioned earlier, I just want you to talk more about it. What’s this mean to the residents and is it, is that connection something that they really value? Are you seeing that as a benefit of this?
Teresa McComb 18:32
We definitely are. The residents love every morning, some of the kids come down and they tell them good morning. When they’re out at breakfast time, it’s kind of the first thing in the kids’ day. And the residents just look forward to it. They love to go sit and just watch them playing on the playground, all the different activities. They just, they really thrive. You can tell that they’re excited for the kids to be here. And then people that are, you know, maybe just starting to think about, maybe I need a nursing home. It’s a much easier transition for them to come here than to go, like to our old building would have been. Because the old building was very institutional, very typical nursing home that was built in the 70s. And they’re just, people want to come look here. They want to see what the rooms look like. They’re excited to move in. You know, I don’t think anybody is going to prematurely move into a nursing home, because it’s just, it’s not something that people, you know, really look forward to. But we want to make it somewhere where, when it comes time and they need a nursing home, they’re excited to come here. They want to have those interactions with the kids. They want to be a part of this community that is so tight knit. And our building is 36 beds, so it’s a small nursing home. Our staff is about 50 to 60 people, so our residents know every single one of our staff members. It is just like a family. Like, when people pass away, all of the staff mourns their passing, as well as other residents that live there. It’s, it’s an amazing place to be and to age, and we want people to be able to come and age with integrity. And just have the best final years possible, where they can thrive and flourish.
Wyatt Beckman 20:20
And you mentioned earlier that, and I can see this happening. I’m from a town of 1,500 and I think this would happen. It might be 1,300 now. But we’re in a community of 500, 450. Odds are, some of the kids that are running around, that they get to interact with our family or extended family, or our families’ friends, or there’s these connections that are really meaningful, and you get to keep those intact and enhance them.
Teresa McComb 20:48
And a good example is even, so we moved in in February, so there was just a couple months of the school year left, and then we went into summer. And the kids, you know, have summer break, and we were a little bit worried about how that was going to go, but so many of the kids that had established relationships made it a point to come in and see the residents that they’ve grown to love. Like they either got their parents to bring them, or if a sibling had to come over for practice in the gym, they would just tag along and then hang out in the nursing home for a couple hours. And it was amazing just to see how in just that short time period, those relationships grew. And I’m excited to see next summer, maybe what we can put together and what we can do with a little more preparation behind us. Like maybe summer, summer camps, maybe, I don’t know, the possibilities are endless.
David Kirkendall 21:42
We brought in the food, summer food program to encourage them. The swimming pool is just out the side of the elementary wing. There was a lot of concept, I think when you moved in, our students, we had, they wrote welcome, welcome home letters to them and put them on their pillows.
Teresa McComb 21:58
There’s welcome signs.
David Kirkendall 22:00
So, our daycare is out the other end. So our local daycare, so it’s really birth to death. That’s all in this small, little area that, that could be.
Wyatt Beckman 22:11
And I, something else I noticed coming in, and I think about in a small community like this, our rural communities that. The high school sports team, you know, that’s, that’s a main attraction, and it matters to people. And going and attending Friday night football game or the basketball game is an important aspect of their lives, and they want, want to be able to do that. And being right here, also close. I imagine that just makes that even easier and more possible. And I imagine that’s a benefit to the residents, but also to the students as they’re building these connections. So David, tell me about the student side, because ultimately, as you, you’ve, you know, you’re a principal. Your main mission or goal, is to, to help students become great students, to learn and to be well prepared for whatever comes next. How does this fit into that?
David Kirkendall 23:10
Well, the first thing, and you talked about the elder group being in there, is I looked at a little different than that. And that is, not everybody that’s in the nursing home is 80 years plus. I’m 54 years old, almost 55, one heart attack, one stroke, one issue medically, and I could be in the nursing home at my age. So that’s the part I saw. And so everything we developed, I didn’t want to just develop, develop for geriatric, elderly. I wanted to look at it as, all those resources, and that’s why I look at those 36 beds are resources that I could use to enhance my education, even if they are not necessarily of that age. Maybe they’re younger. Maybe, we have some that are in there that our, ability to walk is compromised from disease, but their brain is, is great. So what can we do to incorporate it? So as I sold this to my community, I had to have, I had to have a way to show the benefit to my students at all three levels, and I say elementary, middle school and high school. So with my elementary I’ll give you exact, some, some exact examples of what we did. In first grade, my teacher came to me and said, I’m struggling. And I said, why are you struggling? She said, I like to do centers. In first grade, we do centers where students will work at one area, another group is working at a second area, and another in the third. And she said, I don’t have any paras to help me, I’m by myself. And we’re working on pronunciation. So instead of saying sketty, spaghetti, the spa, PAH, in it. And she goes, so when I’m working with kids on how to shape their mouth, I don’t have much to do with the other kids. I don’t have anything for them. Can you help me? And I said, absolutely. Well, I’d found out that day that we had done a “High Five Friday” where the residents came down and high-fived our students. The teachers do that. And they said there was one gentleman who really didn’t participate in any activities at the old nursing home. He was a single male, bachelor, no kids, never married, and just really didn’t have much to do with anybody. So I said, well, he’s a good candidate. So I went down and I talked to him, and he was laying back in his chair, and I said, I need your help. And he goes, what help can I give you? And I said, I need somebody that will sit at a center, and when the teacher is doing that with the students, I need them to hold up a flash card. And on the flash card, it’ll be sight words, like “the” “and” “boy” “girl”, and I need somebody to hold that up and see if the kids can read it. They’ve just got to be able to look at it and know what that word is. At another center, I need somebody to hold up numbers and little math problems. And he looked at me, he goes, I’ll do that. I’ll do that. And so now, that first weekend they were playing, we’re going to start on a Monday. I remember that was on a Friday. And I found out from the CNAs, they wanted to know what I had done, because the two gentlemen that we picked, had spent that weekend talking about what they were going to wear, and how they were going to do it, and what times were we going to need. And I mean, they fully bought into it. So I was able to take those two gentlemen, they come down now two to three times a week, for that item, they come down more than that, but they come down for that item to specifically go into the classroom and help educate those students. On my side, does that, and this is what I ask myself every time, does their presence take anything away from my students, the educational value? And the answer is, no, it only enhances, so it is a win-win for both of us. Teresa has to look at, is it a win-win getting them down there? She might look at it as, I don’t have the resources, I don’t have the people, I don’t have the items. If that’s, if that’s the day issue, maybe she has some people sick. She could let me know, and I might have fourth graders go down there. Now I’m teaching fourth graders responsibility. Walking down the hallway, caring empathy is a huge thing that we need to teach in schools. So they’ll come down and do quite a bit of different activities with my elementary. Elementary things we saw, they were writing letters. So as I talked earlier about, I’d like to see this go further to other programs. I’d like to create a book, and I’ve talked to K-State about this. So if my students are sitting there learning how to write, and they write a letter to Santa in first or second grade, why can’t those letters be put in an envelope and delivered to a nursing home for responses? And do pen pal. They don’t have to be right there. There’s so many activities that could be done like that that, that do not have to occur with both units on the same site. So we’re looking at developing more ideas like that. My high school, I felt was pretty easy. We have a work-study program. I again, I’m a small school. I’m one of the smallest schools in the state, but I’ve had students in the past go down to the clinic and work. They could do that here. If a student wants to do, become a CNA, a nurse, a medical aid, a phlebotomist, a speech pathologist, occupational therapist, rehab specialist. If they want to be a beautician, if they want to learn to do nails, they can come down and instead of being in a classroom where they’re just taking it because there’s nothing else to take, I’m limited on resources. Why not let them go down and and learn on, on the job, instead of going to college for four years and deciding, yeah, I really don’t like that. So there’s that aspect for my high school kids that could get on-the-job training. They can go down there and really see what, what it’s like if I want to do physical therapy or speech pathology. The big one was my middle schoolers. Somebody said, what do you do with your middle school students? Well, I’m a former social studies teacher, and there was a book came out called My Life, the great book, but it’s a diary book, and it has 167 questions of what was life like when you were a kid? Where did you meet your spouse? What did you do when you were, for Christmas? Well, I’ve turned that over to my English teacher. And so on Fridays, they take a piece of paper and a pencil, and they go down to the nursing home. They have residents, and they’ll ask them a question. They’re, they’re required to take handwritten notes. They take those notes, which is something that’s a life skill. They go back to their classroom, English. They take the notes and turn it into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, paragraphs into stories. They have to go back and verify that they got it all correct. Like what you guys would do, did I get the story right? After we do that, we can put it in, in our typing class, and they can learn to digitalize it, type it, correct it, make sure there’s no run on. So it’s English, it’s typing, it’s computers. And then we look back, we’re in 2025. Well, 2012 you have the Wright brothers. That’s, that’s video. So we know we have video and film from 100 years ago. Residents aren’t 100 years old. We can go back and take wedding tapes, we can take photos, we can take family portraits. We can do all of that stuff, bring it into the computer class, scan that in, because we all know that when that resident passes on, all of that’s going to be divided. It’ll never be back together again. So then, as the students start developing those, they can do historical research, they can do genealogy research, they can tie it into, we’re studying about World War II. We know that you served in World War II, or you were in Korea. Now we have firsthand resources to bring into the classroom. When the students are all done, we can take all of their family history, wedding dress photos, everything. We can take the digitalized version of that, put it on a Google Drive, take that QR code, and I have an entrepreneur class that can burn that on a piece of marble, and we can give that to the resident who can, they can put, the family can put that at their headstone, and in 25-50 years, go, hey, I’m going to scan that card. Oh, that’s my great, great grandma’s wedding video, or her photos, or I never saw a film of her. I never saw. Now, you have a resource for that. And it’s all educational based, but it serves a purpose. Rather than write me a story about this, which the kid really has no interest. They’re going down and making connections. They’re going down and reading books to the residents. The residents are correcting them when they don’t know the word. It’s a win-win for all of them. All the way through, from pre-K through 12.
Wyatt Beckman 31:41
What, what amazing examples of, of how you’ve used this, this collaboration and this space to do so many amazing programs. I, my head is sort of spinning thinking of, of how, how much that has to mean to so many people. And so many people beyond the walls of these buildings, the parents, the community members at large, that you’ve built this to where there is so many of these connections. But also this, what I keep hearing that I’m wrestling with in, in my head is, at its core, to entertain and to say, let’s send students over and collect their stories, and let’s invite those, those residents, over, and let’s lean on their ability and have them be involved. There’s this recognition that those older adults have things to offer. Or the residents, whether they’re older, whatever age they are, it’s this, at its core, saying everyone involved in this has something to bring to the table. The students have something, no matter what age they are, have something to bring, a value that’s meaningful to the residents. The residents have something to bring to the table. And I think that starting place is, is incredibly profound and probably undergirds everything you’re doing. Does, I wonder about the community at large. What does this center mean? You talked about the “selling it” for lack of a better word, but now that you’re doing it, what is this, what is this, all of the things you’re doing, what does it come to mean to the community? If you think you can sum it up?
Teresa McComb 33:34
Well, I think the community members can see the benefit in if they have a family member here, you know they’ve noticed that their family members are happier. They’re having more interactions. They’re busier. They’re just excited about what they’ve done during the day. If they go down and read to the kids or show flashcards or anything that they do, they’re excited about that, and they want to share the stories. And the same with the kids. When they come down, they get excited. They make new friends. They go home and they say, “Hey, I met so and so today.” And they’re just excited about their new friends over in the nursing home. So I think the community at large just sees the interactions second-hand or third-hand, and they know how valuable those interactions have become to both sides of the equation.
David Kirkendall 34:23
There’s, we’ve talked about the active participation in the active items. You also have to think of the inactive items. That, the items we didn’t plan on, but hey, wow, this is even better. For example, when the weather is nice, like this, my students have two to three recesses a day. When they’re out there, right outside these windows, playing on the playground equipment, the residents will come out. That’s fine, they can watch, that’s inactive. The research I showed was at about 80 years of age, they stopped being very active with children, and want to watch the kids. Well, I thought, okay, they can come out and they can watch. They’re in a secure area, it’s gated. But then we started to see other items, which was the kids stopped playing on the playground directly and went over to visit with the residents. They had made those connections. They wanted to tell them about their day. They wanted to tell them about their puppy or their kitty and what they were going to do this weekend. And the residents had, they had time to visit where the teacher doesn’t have the time to talk about everybody’s kitty or everybody’s puppy, but the residents did, or their owie that they got. And watch me, will you watch me? I’m gonna go down the slide. Will you do, and every kid was grabbing a resident saying, watch me do this, watch me. And it was that, that unintended contact, but it made such an impact. So as a school, we said, well, let’s open this up. So we opened up our playground, and anybody can come up in the community and play. That we’re sitting in a storm shelter, 450 person storm shelter, anybody in the community can fill out a request. If you’re not selling anything, if you’re not in here trying to sell Tupperware or something. If you’re just wanting to use this facility for a party or an activity, you can use it free of charge, because we want you to bring the residents in and then have the playground. Right next door we have a weight room. That is opened up to the community for a small, minimal fee. We purposely built it that way to where there’s a door that can go to the playground area. So if a mother or a father is up here working out and their kids want to play, you have that interaction. Residents could come down and do activities. If I’m only using it two hours a day for weight, why not open it up for her employees to go down and exercise on their break if they choose to. So there was a lot of other items that kind of help the community buy into it more after it was built, that, that really helps sustain what we’re doing.
Wyatt Beckman 36:50
And another common thing, theme I’m hearing is, let’s maximize this resource. Let’s maximize the space. Let’s maximize the, the equipment. And that means being thoughtful about how it can be used by multiple groups, by the community at large. And that this one initial idea you had, however many years, seven years, seven plus years ago.
David Kirkendall 37:14
20.
Wyatt Beckman 37:15
20 years ago. Factor in that you work on for seven plus years, has grown into having all of these related components. And I think we’re still in the early days of this. I think, something you mentioned that I, we talk a lot about, when it comes to health and healthcare access is workforce. You gave the example of, you can go get some direct experience and exposure to some healthcare fields. And I think about the paths that that can open up for students that are here. And they may have such a great experience here, that they may go off and get the education and be ready to come back.
David Kirkendall 37:57
Correct.
Wyatt Beckman 37:58
And that’s, I think that, I just think about all the ripple effects that can come from this. That it’s really exciting to think about all the things you’ve already done, but the long-term value of this. What, if you had to fast forward 10 years. What, what’s your hope, if you can even let yourself envision some of the things. I know you talked about the book binder and thinking about, how can we share what we’ve learned with others, but just for, for your community, for, for Logan, what’s, what’s the vision?
David Kirkendall 38:33
I would like to see it expand. There were a lot of things we left out that we could put in, that could grow. For example, there’s a lot of residents that are in swing beds in hospitals. They fall, they slip, they break a hip. If they’re coming out of a nursing home, then they’re in the hospital, but their family that they see on a daily basis, is back at the nursing home. If we had a way to build a care that the residents could instead of going to the gym, they could go there. What if we had a small community pharmacy that not only provides the medication needed for the nursing home, but could also be a drop off point for anybody in the community that wants to come up and pick up? If we developed a room this size, that could be a theater, that could be for the residents, but also serve the community. There’s aspects that can grow. We went from, and Teresa, you you can speak on it. But what? Six open beds, maybe, before we moved up here, roughly, to a waiting list that is-
Teresa McComb 39:33
Hitting 30-some people long. Yeah.
David Kirkendall 39:36
So, you know, our hope is that this will bring in residents, but also bring in community, families, that will support the school, because that’s what we need. That’s my side of it, is I need the students in the classrooms that will keep it going. We’ve already hosted the Supreme Court of Kansas. They came out and heard a case in our gym. We brought in 20 different schools, I think it was 1,000 people here, roughly. Bike Across Kansas, came out, toured our facility. They wanted to come in because we had an air conditioned gym for them to be able to stay the night. They were able to see all of our facility and go through and, so it’s already opening it up for others. We’re, I try not to think 10 years ahead, because I don’t know what’s going to happen. I look at five months ahead and go, what is it that we need? What is it we can do? And, and as I’ve said to my teachers, there’s no box to think outside of. It’s, it’s open. Think of anything you want, and if you can come up with an idea, let’s try it. I mean, what’s it, what’s the harm in it? As long as you can show me the benefit to our kids, or to the community, or to the residents, and then and teachers are doing that. They’re, they’re interacting. They’re coming up with new ideas. I think we’ve already put on the schedule the gingerbread houses that they’re going to make with the residents this winter, and some Rube Goldberg item, bird houses we’ve done. I’m sure there’ll be some pumpkin carving next month. We do quite a bit. And, and again, it’s just those connections, that I can’t think 10 years, 10 years ahead. I mean, would I, would I love to have another three houses on there? That’d be great, because I look at it as, for her, as residents, but I look at how much more staff would she need? Another 50? Would we have the housing downtown to support it? Can we get the housing in town to support it? What do we do to get those people here? And so as a worker, if I was a nurse and I knew my parent was going to be in the nursing home and my kids are just down the hallway, that’s a win for me, so.
Wyatt Beckman 41:40
It, it’s already having so many ripple effects, and it sounds like you can see so many more. And I love the spirit of let’s be creative, let’s be collaborative, and let’s, let’s try it. And I, I hear such a willingness between the two of you, to be such good partners in this, and that, that seems like a crucial piece. The last thing I want to ask, ask you both. I, I know that there are going to be people listening to this that are just blown away and go, I would love to have something like that. And maybe they don’t have the proximity to do something exactly like what you have here. What you have here is unique. But there are probably aspects to your collaboration, to your thoughtfulness about interactions between residents and students, and the benefits between the two of them, the role that that can play in the broader community, leveraging resources. There’s so many things I can, I can hear that could be applicable to other communities. If, if someone said, I want to start doing some of what you’re doing, what’s, what’s your advice to them?
David Kirkendall 42:56
My first one is, why? Why do you want to do it? And if you can answer that with four simple words that I use as a principle, why did I do that? What’s best for kids. Why did Teresa do it? What’s best for the residents. If you can look at it that way, instead of we ran into many regulations. We ran into all kinds of stuff. For example, the first construction was supposed to be across the road. That’s what we were looking at. It was an open area, and we have a water tower, and that water tower had to have an arch cut out of it so if it fell, it would not hit the buildings. And I took the architects plan and just tore it in front of him, and I moved it up here and said, wouldn’t this work better? It, you can’t let things like money, resources, any of those things be a blocker to an idea. An idea is, is boundless, you can do whatever you want. And then figure out, once you’ve got the idea in place, then you figure out, what can we do? For example, you may not be able to go out and spend $40 million to build a new facility, $100 million for a new facility. But what are you trying to do? Are you trying to interact? If you’re trying to interact, you can do that without that. You know, let’s have an ice cream social with the residents and the kids, whether the nursing home takes them to the school or the school takes them to the nursing home. Can we have Bingo Night? Can we have storytelling? Can we have the kids create, and from their own, a book, make a book, create a book, and then they go and they present that. If your choir is getting ready to perform for state competitions, and they are looking for people to play for, can’t they go to the nursing home and play? I mean, there’s those aspects that, if you look at it and go, “well, I don’t know if we can do that.” No, what, what is the goal? What is, what is it you’re wanting to do? Educational interaction, make it happen. There shouldn’t be anything that stopped you from that part of it. Facility-wise, maybe. But if you plan ahead, and you look at it and you say, I’m going to make it happen. There were ideas we had that didn’t work out, in this. For example, we, my original idea, and I say we, it was me. I said, I’m paying for my kitchen to be heated and that equipment to be used from five in the morning till about two in the afternoon, and then we’re done. Why couldn’t the residents or the nursing home come in at two and make their meals for the next day? Mix up the meatloaf, mix up the cookies, mix up those items, and then that stuff be hauled down to the nursing home and used. Then I’m using my facility the whole time. Until we found out there are regulations in place that says it was bought with money, state money, so it can only be used for the school. Well, okay, fine, let’s go around that and we’ll get the grant to pay for it. Then we’re not tied into it. But you can’t have certain cans in certain places to meet. Okay, so when we ran into a regulation, we are going to follow the law, but is there a way that we can still accomplish what we want, without violating it? And that’s what we looked at. And in a sense, this one the kitchen, everything, was too much. But everybody looked at that as a downfall or a stopping factor. In reality, it was Teresa and I sitting down, talking, going, “Okay, how do we make this work?” And we worked it out, and she’s able to do what she needs to do, and I’m able to do what I need to do. And, and we just said, let, let the two people running it fix it. And so we did, and it worked out pretty good, I think.
Wyatt Beckman 46:34
So I hear a lot of, I hear a lot of patient persistence, willingness to try something new and, and, and pivot, and be creative, but also, you know, not getting caught up in, we need the facility in order to start being collaborative and creative.
Teresa McComb 46:54
And I think that was a big difference. We had already been doing so much with our residents and with the kids through the years that the kids were already super comfortable in the nursing home. It wasn’t scary or intimidating for them to be around some residents who, you know, they don’t know. Sometimes older people can be scary if you don’t know them. So I think that groundwork and just having those relationships already built, really made a difference. So that when we moved in here, everybody was excited, everybody was ready to go, and everybody was willing to be creative and try new ideas that may or may not work, but you’re not going to know until you try it. So I think that willingness and the attitude coming in, made a huge difference. And will continue to grow. I know at the volleyball game last week, we had 14 or 15, which is about half of our residents down, cheering on the volleyball players. So it’s amazing.
David Kirkendall 47:51
And for us, it was parents, that really helped, and understanding. Because we know that some of the residents are facing dementia. They’re facing different, and they may say things that are slightly inappropriate, or really inappropriate. And for the parents to understand that that might happen, I can’t, I can’t stop every bit of that, but it’s still what’s the greater good. And between Teresa and her crew, they help us kind of filter that out, but yet not isolate that person from those activities. It, they just may not be working with a group, one-on-one. And so, it’s a lot of that. Communication with her staff and my teachers, and then us stepping back and saying to her Activities Director, to my teachers, what do you guys want to work and work it out and let us know, and we’ll be the facilitators. We’ll be the ones to get you the supplies you need. So.
Wyatt Beckman 48:41
Well, I, I am just so impressed by everything that you all have accomplished and the leadership that you’ve shown, and what an asset and resource you all are, and this, this whole collaboration, has become for for Logan. And I won’t be surprised if, if we say, if I let myself go 10 years in the future, that I’ll say, I need to come back and see all the new things and all the other ways that you all have have grown and served your, your students, served the residents, served the community more. But I, I just can’t say thank you enough for taking the time away from all of that work, to talk with me and to share more about what you’re doing. Really appreciate it.
David Kirkendall 49:27
Well, I knew it was success when my mother, before she passed on, she died, and I told her that it was going to happen. And she had made me promise to never put her in a nursing home, because she had worked in one for so many years. And she said, don’t ever put me in one. And I had promised her, and I said, Mom, this is going to happen. We got the funding. It’s, it’s being built. And she said that, that is one you could have put me in. And so I knew at that point that we were going to do good with this, so.
Wyatt Beckman 49:58
And you absolutely have. Thank you, thank you both so much.
David Kirkendall 50:01
Thank you guys for having us.
Teresa McComb 50:02
Thank you.
David Kirkendall 50:04
It’s all STEM-based items. This is called a sensory pathway. I won’t make you guys do it, but we, we developed this down on our other building and then made a new one up here. A sensory pathway is, we understand kids are kids. They want to get up. They want to move. Why not let them? So if you’re sitting in class and the teacher can see your fidgety, they may say, “Do you want to go do the pathway? Yeah.” And so the kid comes out here, and they start right here, and they jump from stone to stone. They bear crawl. Normally, you say, don’t touch the walls. But do what you want. To slap the walls, reach up, touch a bird. They do this whole pathway, all the way down around, the duck walk. And it takes them a couple of, two-to-three minutes to get through it, but that gets them, the energy out of them, that then they can come back and focus.
Unknown Speaker 51:12
[Closing music.]
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
