Transformative Education for a Transformational Generation: How Resilience Education is Shaping the Bayou Communities of Southern Louisiana

Abstract:

In forty years, the students we work to educate in South Louisiana will be approaching their sixties. They will experience the environment predicted by all of our models for climate, sea level rise and coastal land loss. If these predictions are even close to accurate for coastal Louisiana, the life these students will experience will look much different than the life they are living today. In order for future bayou communities to thrive, our students must recognize the inherent resilience of their communities while learning new ways to reduce risk and vulnerability in the places they want to call home. In order to best prepare these students for the challenges ahead, the South Louisiana Wetlands Discovery Center partnered with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research to help develop two resilience education programs that were piloted in the 2019-2020 school year in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana with plans for full implementation in the 2020-2021 school year.

We partnered with the local school district to implement these two programs in Honors and Advanced Placement Environmental Science classes. The Hurricane Resilience curriculum was developed with place-based learning as a foundation where students engaged with their community to learn the impacts of past storms and the preparations made to reduce those impacts. They also learned about the factors that will increase future risks and how those risks can be best managed. Our second program, Project Resilience, was developed in two parts. Part one educated students about the many factors influencing coastal land loss in southern Louisiana including sea level rise, saltwater intrusion, storm surge, and land subsidence. Part two was a Resiliency Planning Tool Kit that helped students develop resiliency plans that could be implemented on their school campuses. We have worked with scientists, educators, planners, government officials, and other nonprofit organizations to strengthen these two programs.

Hurricane Resilience is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations’ Environmental Literacy Program while Project Resilience is supported by the The National Academies of Sciences' Gulf Research Program.