Ripple Effect Water Literacy Project

Ripple Effect envisions a future where teachers and students have the knowledge, skills, and ethical grounding they need to strengthen communities in an era of climate change and sea-level rise. We foster water literacy through multi-year partnerships with New Orleans schools. Together, we create or adapt curricula and provide research-based professional learning to ensure teachers can incorporate real-world, climate-related water issues into everyday science instruction.

The speed with which communities in this region must adapt to climate-related issues is outpacing the rate at which schools can respond. Ripple Effect was founded out of a desire to help schools and teachers catch up in their teaching of climate-related water issues so that today's students are prepared to address the environmental challenges of tomorrow.

All Ripple Effect projects include in-depth curriculum adaptations with multidisciplinary teams of water- and climate-focused researchers, practitioners, educators, and community members. Project activities extend into the classroom as well. Ripple Effect provides teachers and instructional leaders with wraparound support to enact research-based science teaching practices that strengthen student agency through inquiry, scientific modeling, and student-driven discourse. To date, we have developed and enacted multi-week water literacy instruction in over 10 schools, reaching thousands of students through standards-aligned courses and curricula.

Testimonials

"There was a spirit to how we taught these lessons. We were grounded in the culture that we were teaching about. We were grounded in the communities that were being impacted by the water issues that we were teaching students about." - Madeline Mandon, 4th grade science teacher

"I felt engaged as a practitioner the whole time from Ripple Effect. I felt valued. I felt like my opinion mattered. All that stuff was really, really amazing to experience, especially in relation to other modes of professional development where the teacher voice feels very far away from the task at hand." - Trey Pratt, Choral Music Director, KIPP New Orleans and New Voices New Orleans