Collaborative Research: Racial Equity: Known Rivers: Creating Justice-Centered Water Literacy along the Lower Mississippi River
PERIOD:
TO
The children of New Orleans, LA, face twin environmental and educational challenges borne from a complex history of racial segregation and discrimination. In a city that has long dealt with frequent flooding, Black, Indigenous, and low-income communities disproportionately experience the effects of environmental degradation such as sinking infrastructure, urban flooding, and land loss. Following Hurricane Katrina, the school system in New Orleans was restructured as a decentralized system run by non-profit charter management operators, which resulted in the eradication of Black community voice in the operation of the school system.
Known Rivers will work to repair the segregative rifts between human beings and wider ecologies and between schools and community by reconnecting environmental science education to the human social, cultural, and political experience. The project objectives are to
1. convene a Community Steering Committee of Black and Afro-Indigenous New Orleans community leaders and water experts to co-develop a framework for justice-centered water literacy;
2. produce two curriculum units for approximately 640 students in grades 3-8 that focus on the connections among the hydrology and climate of the lower Mississippi River and Gulf Coast, the racial history of Black people in South Louisiana, and impacts of water issues on Black neighborhoods;
3. conduct professional learning experiences for elementary and middle school teachers designed to build sociopolitical clarity and pedagogical expertise necessary for teaching justice-oriented water literacy; and
4. study how children's teachers', and community-members' participation in learning, teaching, and schools shift as they engage in co-learning activities around water and justice.
