Chocolate was the dominant bear in the Rocky Mountain ecosystem of Mount Robson – until he was hit by a semi-trailer. With an injured back, he used swimming as a tool to ease his pain and navigate a landscape increasingly littered by roads and railways and pipelines. He succeeded until the day he couldn’t cross the railway fast enough to avoid a train.

His last surviving offspring? Two bears – a male and female – who, despite conventional wisdom, refused to separate after being run off by their mother. For three years, instead of becoming competitors, these bears have spent every waking second together – grazing, hunting, denning. Playing. They’ve learned to survive in an increasingly complex world for large carnivores by helping each other thrive.

This is not just a story about an indicator species. It’s a visual metaphor for our relationship with nature: fragile, yet resilient. It’s also a metaphor for how we can find a better balance in a changing world: by working with each other – with unlikely allies in unlikely circumstances – we can find new solutions to old problems.

The story unfolds across the lessons in each of the five courses fundamental to understanding the interconnectivity of nature and decision-making: Science, Socials, Language, Art and Career. The lessons connect outward from the lives of the bears and the ecosystem they call home, to the larger issues that shape their world and ours.

As students explore curriculum requirements like career trends, the food chain and policy-making, their teachers are not only the bears, but also 150 diverse citizens – from former prime ministers to top chefs – whose daily choices affect our entire society, including the bears.

Unlike your one-dimensional textbook, you realize this digital classroom appeals to the different learning styles of everyone around you: info-graphics and detailed maps, media videos and articles with analysis, podcast-style interviews with diverse experts and interactive virtual presentations and field trips all help relate your animal back to the overarching class lesson.

You can see now that nothing is black and white and you find yourself empathizing with those you thought you disagreed with.

What you love most? This platform is like the social media world you live in, with the material provided being constantly updated in real time, relating the subject matter to what it means to your animal and its home – and how that relates to your community and to your world – not a year ago or even yesterday, but today.

Each class, as your teacher unveils the lesson – a research assignment, a topic tutorial, term definitions, current event analysis, a class discussion or debate – you realize you’re building toward a cumulative challenge project, a chance for you to think critically about how we can better balance the needs of people and nature.

And while your project must fit within the course parameters, you know you’re free to innovate and no one is telling you what to think or believe, so long as you can defend your idea.

The best project from every class will be submitted to a ‘National Idea Bank’, where each one will inform new thinking and one individual, as selected by a bi-partisan panel of experts, will receive mentorship to continue building the idea.

By the end of Nature Labs, students will connect the story of these bears to global issues and back to the communities where they live. They’ll understand the relevance of the lessons they’ve learned and how they relate to current events, good citizenship and their future career.

And by showcasing the importance of listening and empathizing with those we might disagree with, we can help students think more critically and act more creatively – for people and for nature – today and tomorrow.

This is Nature Labs.