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 professional training and Next Generation Science Standard-aligned curriculum, so teachers can incorporate real-world, climate-related water issues into everyday science instruction.
Since 2013, Ripple Effect has introduced water literacy to over 15,000 teachers, students and families. Our curriculum and Teacher Fellowship program has produced 40 Fellows and over 220,000 hours of NGSS-aligned, in-school instruction to 5,000 students in Louisiana. We also train teachers on curriculum design and inquiry-based science instruction for the Louisiana Department of Education.
TESTIMONIALS
"Once the students understood that this was a real-life problem, happening right now-that was powerful." - Dr. Marcus Woods, 3rd Grade Teacher
"I had an epiphany. RE's process for curriculum design was extremely helpful." - High School Teacher, Coastal Teaching Fellowship Program
If we don't have levees, and there's a storm, the water gets higher and higher and higher. That's bad because the water will go into the city and into the houses. The city is shaped like a bowl, so the water goes down into the city. - 1st Grade Ripple Effect Student
SPECIAL INITATIVE
Currently, Ripple Effect is in the midst of developing an online teacher training platform. With advisors from Google, Potion Design, and Ralph Appelbaum Associates, we are designing a web-based app that will provide teachers with content knowledge, instructional moves, and field-tested water literacy curricula, in one seamless experience. It will use adaptive learning to meet the diverse needs of many more teachers, thus rapidly preparing teachers to faithfully implement rigorous and high-quality science instruction about environmental issues destabilizing coastal communities today.
We have handpicked an interdisciplinary team, with experience leading large-scale, first-in-kind projects, to implement this initiative. They bring expertise in teacher mentorship, research, communications, and management, with backgrounds in K-12 education, academia, curriculum design, and cultural interpretation. Team members have overseen multimillion dollar budgets and multi-constituency projects, including those for the Obama Presidential Library, a research laboratory at Northwestern University, and The Field Museum.
By giving to Ripple Effect today- even $1 - we promise to send you regular video updates of our progress, including behind-the-scenes glimpses of the development and testing process.