Water Feels by Jaylene Hoffman

In an effort to develop critical empathy within an Early Years context, The Water Feels Project aims to increase students’ sense of connection to water and invite critical thinking around its underlying emotions, valuing water as a sacred, living spirit.

This project aims to create awareness of the complex relationship that water has with humans and the surrounding natural world. Learners will explore how these relationships effect water and work to better understand the root of her emotions.

With this deeper connection and mutual respect established, students will become in tune with, and protectors of, the water in their community, as local agents of change. This learning will then ripple beyond the local community through water justice detective

work on a larger, global scale. The project invites the exploration of the following essential questions:

How does water make me feel?

Does water feel?

How can I better understand her emotions?

The Water Feels Project will be organized and shared as an inquiry support document for teachers, intended for learners between Kindergarten to Grade 4. Learners will be invited to explore the guiding questions through a variety of creative learning experiences, including:

• Movement activities

• Poetry prompts

• Multimodal storytelling

• A variety of rich, mentor texts

Intentional walking provocations will be layered with photography invitations to empower learners to capture the emotions bubbling from beneath the water’s surface, and then write to make sense of them. Turning to the Red River as another teacher, learners will listen deeply and think critically to better understand and honour her, relearning ways of interacting and learning with the land.

Zooming out, learners will be able to apply their empathetic lens to a water injustice issue in a global context, through a letter writing invitation with “Write for Rights” (Amnesty International). Opportunities for publication and celebration of written and multimodal learning will be incorporated by an exhibition to honour the learning and ensure it lives on.

The Water Feels Project hopes to flow alongside the waters within the school community and into the hearts of its students and staff, inviting a shift in perspective, deepened connection, and openness to feel with, and thus protect, the water around them.