October 26–28, 2020 | Durham, NC

Abstract for Session 5F: Tuesday 3:30–5:00

Session 5F
Step Up, Get Ready, Respond! Taking Flood Resilience to School
LINCOLN

Convened Session   Step Up, Get Ready, Respond! Taking Flood Resilience to School

Merrie Koester (organizer) — University of South Carolina
Jennifer Albert — The Citadel
Jared Bramblett — Davis and Floyd, Inc.

Imagine a Flooding School in a low income housing project in the center of an EDUCATIVE RESILIENCE-GENERATING-SYSTEM (ERGS), which is fed and sustained by the ENERGY OF COMMUNITY. The goal of the collective impact effort is to disrupt a state of“educational vulnerability” (lack of access to information and knowledge) by legitimizing and positioning historically marginalized middle school youth as important potential resources of knowledge about flood hazard risks.

Through the coming together of people, ideas, and time, and expertise, Kids Teaching Flood Resilience (https://www.kidsteachingfloodresilience.com/) has formed on the Charleston, SC, peninsula. Now beginning its third year, the project is growing stronger, with more and more community partners serving as mentors and/or consultants. Facilitated by Dr. Merrie Koester of the USC Center for Science Education, the project has the support of leaders from over 16 organizations, including four different City government offices and two other higher education institutions — the Citadel and the College of Charleston. The emerging schools-to-community curriculum includes an academically rigorous study of science, mentor-led place-based learning about the flooding problem, and the development of creative competencies for youth to make, publically share, and test the impacts of their sharing to safeguard their flooding communities before and during extreme weather events. Every level of interaction in the model is guided by three questions: 1) What you gotta NOTICE? 2) What you gotta KNOW? 3) What can you D0 or MAKE with the INFO?

We believe the Kids Teaching Flood Resilience model can be implemented as a climate-impact tool in other flooding, low-income school communities. We will share findings and products from two pilot studies, which show that our model is doable, feasible, and implementable. Our two music videos, featuring middle school students making specific calls to action, have been vetted by multiple flood hazard risk specialists and deemed to have significant potential.

During this workshop, we hope to stimulate conversations about how to take this emerging work to the next level. For example, how can we better incorporate existing community wisdom and funds of knowledge to determine levels of existing flood resilience literacy? What accessible new tools might we co-make with youth to improve community flood resilience and legitimize their efforts as flood resilient citizen scientists? Please do join us!

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