Adaptation Education
Sea Level Rise Education
In 2023, Wetlands Watch launched a new initiative that pulls together the foundational concepts of our programmatic expertise, and transforming that holistic, multi-sector work into classroom-accessible content. Advocating for sea level rise and climate adaptation strategies is huge and complex work, and our team is invested in making sure innovative progress on climate adaptation is ongoing and accessible to local and regional stakeholders.
We realized that one massive part of making change successful is investing in young people, rising stewards of change, who live in or near high-climate risk communities and are impacted by the effects of sea level rise and flooding. Providing young students with opportunities to engage in place-based investigations of the challenges their community faces now and in the future helps foster greater climate literacy, real-world investigation skills, and critical thinking. Long-term, we’re also aiming to provide teachers with accessible materials that help them teach climate change in the classroom in ways that resonate with them and their students, providing local examples, field trip opportunities, and connections to every sector working on this issue from the individual, to national agencies, to the globe.
We are in the pilot phase of this initiative and have completed one full year of immersive education with 8th grade capstone students at The Williams School in Norfolk. In 2024, we’re partnering with the Virginia Beach school system’s Environmental Studies Program to align our curriculum with AP Environmental Science objectives and involve more students, teachers, and learning standards into the development of our program. We’re also exploring more ways to deliver the high school-level certification of the Chesapeake Bay Landscape Professionals program (CBLP-Associates), which provides students credentials in green infrastructure careers.
We encourage you to explore our pilot work on this website, and reach out if you’re interested in our education materials!
THE WILLIAMS SCHOOL
(2023 - 2024)
Eight grade science capstone students at The Williams School — a lab school based in Norfolk, VA where sea level rise is presently occurring at the highest rate on the U.S. east coast — took on the inaugural pilot of our Sea Level Rise Education initiative in 2023-2024. We thank the students and teachers this class for their creativity and endurance in learning about these complex, and often harrowing, projections of local climate change impacts right in their own backyards. Check out their projects below!
We Love the Sea
Social Media Outreach Project
Williams School students Livi, Allie, and Eloise used their voices on TikTok to share informative facts about sea level rise and what the future could look like based on today’s predictions. As of May 2024, their most popular video has 2,500 views!
The group also created an informative flier linking to various flood resources that help people learn more about their proximity to risk. The group included information about hurricane and tropical storm flooding by sharing a risk map from Virginia’s Department of Emergency Management “Know Your Zone”.
When asked what surprised them while they spent the year learning about sea level rise, Eloise said: “It’s really surprising to me that people don’t know what [sea level rise] is or why it happens because we see it daily. My basement floods all the time, […] our front steps are caving in because of all the water damage.”
Find we.love.the.sea.123 on TikTok to see this group’s incredible videos!
Rain Barrels & Rain Gardens
Stormwater Project
Amir, Carver, and Zachary are the three gentlemen crouched on the right of the photo. Their rain barrel stands tall in the top right corner, decorated with the school’s mascot and colors.
Rain barrels and rain gardens are important stormwater management features that help collect and restore rain water with nature-based designs and native plants in mind. To help The Williams School mitigate some of its localized rainfall flooding, Amir, Carver, and Zachary remodeled a rain barrel that now lives near the elementary school playground to serve as both an education tool for young students and a solution to flooding for the property. The group also designed a rain garden to be installed by future students in an area frequently flooded by runoff next to the school’s entrance.
Hydrofacts
Flooding Survey Data Project
Tidal flooding in Hampton Roads is a neighborhood issue, impacting the daily lives of those who live in coastal areas. Capstone students Sophia, Savannah, and Mackenzie wanted to know how many Williams School families deal with flooding, if they know about sea level rise, and if their neighborhood has done anything to stop the flooding.
The group built an informative website and sent a survey out through a Williams School newsletter that received numerous responses from parents and teachers. In response to a question about how flooding has impacted their lives, survey respondents said: “School closing”, “Basements flooding”, “Property damage”, and “Having to navigate different routes when driving”.
The group invited attendees of the Tide Capsule Premiere to write flood mitigation ideas on sticky notes as an added layer of engagement.
When asked about the most surprising thing she learned during the capstone program, Mackenzie shared: “If we don’t do anything about [flooding]… things are just going to end up getting worse. If you have a problem, and you know there is a problem, don’t procrastinate, don’t just push it back. The next generation could be dealing with it in even worse ways.”
Future Flooding
Flood Prediction Data Project
Many localities across coastal Virginia are working to implement standards and projects that help communities adapt to sea level rise and plan for its effects in the future. Williams School students Nathan, Gavin, and Patrick embarked on a deep-dive of existing sea level rise planning efforts and tools used by the City of Norfolk, and shared information on how those tools can be helpful for planning at the Tide Capsule premiere. The students also surveyed Williams School families on whether or not they have flood insurance and how to identify their flood risk. Patrick said about the project, “I must admit I never really thought much of flooding before this project… I really realized how much damage flooding can cause to the environment.”
Gavin added, “This project changed my thinking on flooding… researching it really showed me how bad flooding can get and how bad it can be. We saw in the next 80 years it can go up 10 feet and that’s a lot.”
Nathan said, “I think, especially with this project, the educational discourse can be the best way to develop change and improve the community.”
Legend the Loggerhead
Pollution Awareness Project
Pollution is an important climate change concept that might not seem like it has a connection to flooding on first glance — but look closer at flood how flood waters move throughout a city, and you might notice how easily litter on the streets can be swept up and carried away into estuaries, wetlands, streams and creeks, and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay. Williams School students Ila, Anna, Fenton, Lila, Ava, and Louise designed an art project — a sea turtle made entirely of waste material at the school —
to help spread awareness of the issue of pollution and why keeping cities clean can be of great benefit to the critters living in our coastal waterways.
Their sea turtle, named Legend, comes with a story: as a young hatchling, Legend overcame all of the typical challenges that a baby turtle must face as it emerges from an egg. After dodging predators and human-made barriers on the beach, Legend made it into the ocean only to find new survival challenges at every step: plastic bags that look like jellyfish, wrappers that look like kelp... Today, Legend stands a fossilized statue of waste collected throughout his lifetime in the ocean that was transported from city surfaces by flooding — reminding all students that walk through one of the Williams School buildings to leave no trace behind.