Sometimes we can make things just a little too complicated.  

We miss the metaphor for the words, lose sight of the lesson trying to guess at its meaning. Sometimes the answer is right in front of us.  

Take for example water, and how it ripples beyond our view to shores we don’t consider after the initial ripple leaves our awareness.  

Or, take learning: we measure moments with blunt tools often missing all the learning that happens before our eyes; missing, more importantly, that what is learned now crystalizes later in ways we cannot begin to imagine, with learning we will never know.  

We are of the water in more ways than one.  

It’s fitting then that students at Queen Elizabeth Public School in Perth, Ontario have turned to water. Have followed in the footsteps of water-keepers before them, most notably Autumn Peltier.  

Their advocacy, activism, and awareness campaigning seek to make right an injustice in their own backyards, one they became aware of first from continents so far away. The premise, however, is essential: clean water matters.  

In powerful voices that only children can conjure, these grade 2/3 students with the guidance of their teacher, Alaina Tanner, are working to help others, and modeling for all of us how to right a wrong. 

What's in a story?

Words.

From the words that we speak come the stories we tell. In time, these words, these stories, are transferred to text shared in ink, a permanent record of our stories.

With a renewed focus on the science of reading, making sense of the words, learning to connect the code to the meaning our words convey, learning to READ, one might make the mistake that reading is like breathing as though reading is like a universal modality. Of course, this would be a mistake. For children experiencing blindness or low vision, the words, the illustrations, the meaning makers, are not as accessible as they are for the sighted. Story boxes are one solution to mitigate this reality...bringing stories and words to life with objects that can be held and sensed as they come up in the book. Story boxes are then a resource desperately needed and in short supply for blind and low vision students. When grade 4 students at Naismith PS in Almonte Ontario discovered the power and necessity of a Story Box and how few are available, they asked "What can we do?".

In this conversation, the first in a series telling the stories of RWL in the Upper Canada District School Board, we speak to Tammy Kleiboer and her students at Naismith Public School about the learning adventure that has led to the design and creation of 20 additional story boxes to be included in the provinces lending library. Real-World Learning begins with meaning, purpose, and contribution. Children are craving to direct their learning towards improving the state of the world. In the case of the Story Box Project, improving the world one story at a time.