In education, and beyond, we hear it all too often. It’s a disdain for youth. How this generation of young people is failing – at the essentials, at life, in school. It is a comment of frustration and apathy and disregard. Kids today.

If you work in our schools you witness a different reality. In social media vernacular, despite the challenges of being young and growing up, the kids are alright.

In the case of students from Vankleek Hill Collegiate Institute in Vankleek Hill, Ontario, alright doesn’t do justice for how the kids are doing.

Following their remarkably humble educator, Turner Onion, students at VCI helped to reimagine what a business course might do in the act of learning. The learning focused on a problem and how business-sense, and entrepreneurial spirit could address it: if students designed a learning commons with their needs in mind, what would the design be? The project began there. How to move a design from paper to reality, well that took all the real-world learning acumen you can imagine.

In the summer of 2023, as things were winding down in Ontario schools, students, staff, and the community were putting the finishing touches on a year-long project that brought a school together. Turner would tell you that the success belongs to the students. He’s right, it does.

What he might forget to tell you is that his leadership, vision, and willingness to make room for learning and follow the students was the catalyst and, ultimately, the path to success.