Grand Rapids — Harlow Billings gamely placed her hand inside a mystery box, gripped the object inside and used her sense of touch to try to puzzle out what it was.
“It feels like,” Harlow said, pausing, “a spoon?”
She guessed right. Her mother, parent-volunteer Lisa Billings, popped the box open to display the soup ladle within, prompting big cheers from Harlow and her classmates in the Children’s House pre-K and kindergarten program at Grand Rapids Montessori Academy.
The students were spending the day learning about what life is like for individuals with visual impairments during the school’s recent Braillebration event in mid-March. Braillebration featured guest speakers and hands-on activity stations, one of which was Harlow’s mystery box. The activity underscored an important aspect of the blind experience, which 6-year-old Olive Szuminski summed up nicely.
“Blind people can’t see, so they have to feel,” Olive observed.
Elsewhere, students learned how to use Braille keyboards to type their names, and explored tools used by people with vision impairments to help them navigate the world.
The celebration was organized by Children’s House teacher Tracy Morgan and parent Abby Koroma, whose 4-year-old daughter, Jubilee — a student in Morgan’s class — is legally blind.
Morgan has implemented Braille into her classroom instruction, and after having a smaller-scale Braillebration event in 2025, she and Koroma wanted to broaden it this year, spreading awareness to the other Children’s House classrooms at Montessori.
“We are celebrating Braille … as an entire school, to highlight this important literacy method,” Koroma said.
So, as Jubilee learns Braille herself, her school community is rallying around her, showing support and a desire to learn more about vision impairments.
“It feels kind of great,” Jubilee said, a bit shyly, about her classmates’ efforts to better understand her world. “I think they’re enjoying learning Braille.”
‘A blind person can do almost everything’
Jubilee’s father, Osman Koroma, who is also blind, was one of the guest speakers during the event. He talked to students about assistive technology that’s useful to people with vision impairments, passing around several examples of helpful tools, from talking alarm clocks and beeping soccer balls to magnifiers that help people with low vision read print.
He said students were “very curious, very inquisitive (and) very eager to try” the items he passed around, and that they had tons of questions about what it’s like to be blind.
“I’m so grateful, as a blind person and also as a parent, for the Montessori school allowing us to do this, because it educates kids of (Jubilee’s) generation,” he said. “This starts to provide the knowledge to these kids that a blind person can do almost everything. And they can be included in leadership.”
His main hope is that students walk away from the event with an increased level of comfort and understanding regarding visual impairments. He wants them to “be free to ask questions, to explore (and) to just be more knowledgeable of how to interact with other individuals who are blind or have low vision,” and to remember that “they are people first.”
Another speaker, blind singer-songwriter Jules Hoogland, read Braille to students and emphasized the importance of learning the tactile reading and writing format at a young age.
“It’s better to start off when you’re younger, because you have better sensitivity with your fingers and you’re also able to learn easier because you’re younger,” Hoogland told students.
A Heartening Response From Students, Parents
Morgan and Abby Koroma hope to keep Braillebration going on an annual or semi-annual basis. They said students and parents have been enthusiastic about the event.
“They enjoy learning about it and they enjoy the inclusiveness of it, the parents do,” Morgan said. “They appreciate that we’re bringing in things that surround a classmate who needs different types of tools to learn. … It just adds more empathy and compassion all around.”
‘We are celebrating Braille … as an entire school, to highlight this important literacy method.’
— parent Abby Koroma
She added that she hopes the event builds “empathy and compassion for others, no matter who they are,” and she said that, since having Jubilee in her class, those qualities are already on the rise among her students.
“The empathy and kindness — it’s grown, just because they have a chance to practice that every day,” she said.
Abby Koroma said she’s heartened by the enthusiasm with which Jubilee’s classmates embrace learning about her needs.
“When I look ahead to Jubilee’s future, as a young adult and living independently, I’m thinking of how much brighter her future will be with peers who know Braille, who see the value of it, who understand it’s a really important literacy tool, and who maybe have the motivation to make things more accessible for her and for kids like her,” she said.
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