Ripple Effect

We are a community of teachers, water experts, and design educators working to establish water literacy in schools. We create standards-aligned and design-based learning experiences that connect to real places.

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Community Spotlight: Cyndhia Ramatchandirane, The Water Institute of the Gulf

       This past fall and winter, Cyndhia Ramatchandirane joined Ripple Effect for two teacher workshops. Cyndhia is a Scientist Associate with The Water Institute of the Gulf. She focuses on Louisiana delta science, specifically the physical movements of water and the transport of sediments. Her work involves multiple disciplines, including hydrology, geology, wetlands science, and marine sciences. Her personal research interests are focused on water resources, coastal restoration, and the exchange of sediment and freshwater in the Mississippi River Delta.

       During our Soils and Water workshop in September (pictured above), Cyndhia gave an overview of how delta landscapes are formed, and how the Mississippi River Delta compares to others around the world. She showed us how to use our different senses to distinguish between the sands, silts, and clays, and helped us understand the ways in which water carries or deposits these sediments.  

       At the second workshop, Cyndhia shared with us the latest science on coastal land loss and subsidence, as well as coastal restoration efforts that are planned or already underway. We’re thankful to Cyndhia for sharing her expertise with us, and imparting so clearly the importance of understanding how the interactions of soils,water, and human actions will determine the future of the region.

       We asked Cyndhia what she would want today’s students to know about her work. Her answer:

Don’t be afraid of science (or math!) or working with someone who has a different specialty or worldview than you. Math and science are both tools that can be used for a range of solutions, and are not necessarily stand-alone subjects. Working with different people with different skills leads to bigger and better results. You don’t need to take high-level classes in the subjects or hire a scientist for every project, but it is important to understand how science applies to your life, and the world around you.

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All views expressed here are Cyndhia’s own, and not an official position of The Water Institute of the Gulf.

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This is our second ‘Community Spotlight! Through our work, we’ve connected with professionals from New Orleans and around the world. They inspire us with what they are doing each day to deepen our knowledge of land and water, strengthen their communities, or empower youth. This include designers, planners, policy makers, artists, scientists, and community advocates. We are excited to share their stories and what they’ve taught us. We ask each of them a variation on one simple question: “What is one thing every child growing up today should know?”

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       Photos from our Soils and Water workshop last month, when we took a workshop field trip to the mouth of Bayou St John, where the bayou meets Lake Pontchartrain. There, we explored the lakefront levees that protect the city, the sector gates that close off the bayou when a hurricane advances, an old fort from the Colonial era, live oaks, and efforts to restore wetland conditions along the banks of the bayou. Together, we created a set of photographs that convey these different aspects of Bayou St. John and the surrounding landscape.  

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Meet the core team

(From Left to right) Claire Anderson, Co-director. Kristen Kelsch, Design Education Lead. Katie Gruzd, Operations Lead. Kristen Hill, Design Education Intern. Aron Chang, Co-director.  (Not pictured: Aki Carpenter, Art Director)

       At the core of Ripple Effect is a multidisciplinary team that includes teachers, designers, and resilience planners. From day one, it has been the exchange of ideas, working methods, tools, and skill sets across disciplines that drive our work. Together, we tackle the question of what it means to try to redefine environmental education and to foster environmental stewardship through place-based teaching, learning, research, and design.

Claire Anderson is project co-director. She formulates Ripple Effect methods within the context of K-12 and high stakes schools. She leads planning of community events and partnerships. She has taught math and science at KIPP Central City Primary for four years, and has created national standards-aligned curriculum for both 1st and 3rd grade. Prior, Claire worked at Ralph Appelbaum Associates, developing original content for new exhibits and educational programs at science and history museums.

Aron Chang is project co-director. He helps frame Ripple Effect within the realms of resilience planning, design, and community advocacy. He serves on the steering committee of the Greater New Orleans Water Collaborative. At Waggonner and Ball, he was a design team lead and primary author for the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan, which articulates a vision for “living with water.” He has taught urban design and drawing at Louisiana State University and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Katie Gruzd is the operations lead. Katie studied political science and sustainable development and wrote her master’s thesis on coastal wetland loss in Louisiana. In addition to expanding Ripple Effect’s operational capacity through communications, development, and event coordination, Kate also works in the New Orleans Office of Resilience and Sustainability as a Resilience AmeriCorps VISTA. She focuses there on public engagement and volunteer development for projects that address coastal land loss and urban water management.

Kristen Kelsch is the design education lead. Kristen has taught architectural design studios, introductory representation, and upper-division research courses at Louisiana State University School of Architecture since 2010. Her research interests include beginning design education and architectural design as inquiry. She is also the director of the LSU Architecture Camp, a summer camp for high school students that introduces them to the profession.  

Kristen Hill is the design education intern. Kristen is a Masters of Architecture candidate at Tulane University as well as a Design Thinking Fellow with the Phyllis M. Taylor Center for Social Innovation and Design Thinking. Her background includes working with educational non-profits and organizations such as PlayBuild and the Arts Council New Orleans’s Youth Solutions program.

Aki Carpenter is Ripple Effect’s art director, and in charge of Ripple Effect’s visual identity and website. Aki is also a creative director for exhibition design at Ralph Appelbaum Associates in New York City. She has opened over ten award-winning museums and cultural institutions worldwide. In September 2016, she opened the National Museum of African American History and Culture in D.C.

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Living with Water

       Water is a constant presence in New Orleans, even if it is not immediately visible. Our intricate network of pipes, underground canals, and pumps make it easy to forget, sometimes, that we receive over 60 inches of rain each year or that we live in the delta. Even so, water saturates the air we breathe, buoys the soils upon which we build our homes, and defines many of our most beloved public spaces.

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Water infrastructure in New Orleans is BIG! 

       When the EPNO / Ripple Effect cohort visited DPS 6 this past summer (see previous post), participants got to see the inside of a Wood Screw Pump because it was under repair. The Wood Screw Pump visible here is what draws water up and out into the London Avenue outfall canal. These are the pumps that were invented here in New Orleans, and put into operation for the past century. They are the machines that help to keep New Orleans dry when it rains.

Visit these these links to learn more about the Wood Screw Pump:

http://www.nola.com/175years/index.ssf/2012/02/albert_baldwin_wood_the_times-.html http://www.loyno.edu/~history/journal/1995-6/haydel.htm

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Advancing Water Literacy with the Emerging Philanthropists of New Orleans

       We are thrilled to have the Emerging Philanthropists of New Orleans (EPNO) as a partner. Together, we are piloting an RFP process through which local nonprofits can apply for grants totaling $11,550 to support new or existing programs that advance water literacy and awareness across the Greater New Orleans Region. We are excited to announce the winner(s) of the sub-grant on November 2 at the EPNO Awards Ceremony!    

       EPNO works with young professionals to educate and inspire them to become lifelong philanthropists, while connecting them to local non-profits, professionals and the New Orleans community. This year, a cohort of EPNO alumni took on the challenge of learning about urban water issues, the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan, and water literacy. In the field, they visited a drainage pump station as well as the rain gardens at KIPP Central City Primary. Through dinners and panel discussions with invited water experts, EPNO participants gained an understanding of how water issues affect different areas of life in New Orleans -- from schools to community advocacy to economic development -- and the different ways in which nonprofits working in different sectors can contribute to regional water literacy.

       This RFP and grantmaking process is supported by the EPA and by funds EPNO participants contributed. The RFP resulted in 11 proposals. EPNO participants then conducted 5 site visits to learn more about the proposed projects and the capacities of applicant organizations, and has narrowed the choices down to organizations that they believe will be able advance notions of water literacy the most with the available funds.

       Through this process, during which we have engaged lawyers, consultants, business owners, educators, and the other professionals who make up the EPNO cohort, we have learned how water literacy is meaningful to a broader range of New Orleanians. We’re thankful to have connected with these young leaders -- their enthusiasm for this city and its people is inspiring.

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Community Spotlight: Kate Hagemann, Miami-Dade County’s Office of Resilience

       Kate Hagemann is a Sustainability Initiatives Coordinator within the Office of Resilience at Miami-Dade County, where her work focuses primarily on climate change and adaptation to sea level rise. She also worked on coastal climate adaptation during the post-Sandy Rebuild by Design and National Disaster Resilience competitions. While earning her Master of Environmental Science at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Science, she studied how cities use grey and green infrastructure to adapt to sea level rise.  

       Kate joined us for our kickoff workshop in July. She presented an overview of the latest climate science, and we discussed the growing impact of climate change and sea level rise on coastal communities. She also shared how youth in Miami have made an impact by speaking out and demanding that their elected officials and city government take action on climate change.

       We asked Kate what she would want today’s students to know about what she does. Her response was simple and poignant. “That climate change is real, and sea levels are rising, and will continue in an irreversible way for our generation and the next. We have to change the way we think about the coast and recognize that coastal areas will become increasingly dynamic over our lifetimes.”

       Thank you, Kate!

To read more about the impact sea level rise is having in Miami, this article provides great insight: 

https://newrepublic.com/article/123216/miami-sinking-beneath-sea-not-without-fight

       This is our first ‘Community Spotlight! Through our work, we’ve connected with professionals from New Orleans and around the world. They inspire us with what they’re doing each day to deepen our knowledge of land and water, strengthen their communities, or empower youth. This include designers, planners, policy makers, artists, scientists, and community advocates. We are excited to share their stories and what they’ve taught us.

       We will ask each of them a variation on one simple question: “What is one thing every child growing up today should know?”

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Ripple Effect workshops

       Workshops prepare teachers to teach the design process, while deepening their knowledge of science content. The Ripple Effect year begins with an intense 2-day kickoff in the summer, long before school starts, and continues throughout the school year with monthly half day workshops. During these workshops:

Teachers visit local wetlands, bayous, pump stations, and other locations in order to develop understanding of the landscape and water infrastructure.

With the aid of design educators, participants isolate and explore discrete design phases to strengthen their grasp of the design process.

Teachers work together on developing visual unit plans.

Teachers and design educators analyze classroom video and student work to develop best practices.

Guest lecturers provide additional context, with presentations on climate change, land formation in the delta, and other key topics.

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Introducing our 2016-2017 cohort of teachers

       This year, Ripple Effect has expanded its reach and is working with seven new teachers, from five different schools and across two parishes. Two teachers are native New Orleanians. Five teachers have over 6 years of teaching experience. Three teachers work at selective admissions public schools, and the rest work at open-enrollment public schools. One teacher holds an undergraduate degree in Biology and a PhD in pharmacology. Three of the eight teachers have previous experience using design in their classrooms.

       Our teachers are thought partners -- their input shapes the direction of Ripple Effect programming and the resources that we develop together.  At our kickoff workshop in August, for example, the teachers worked in groups with Ripple Effect designers to define the habits and skills we want students to demonstrate in every Ripple Effect lesson all year, and then beyond in their everyday lives. All Ripple Effect lessons are built around our modified design process: EXPLORE | CREATE | SHARE. Teachers experience and internalize these modes of learning to determine “enduring understandings” for their Ripple Effect lessons. Through this kind of in-depth work, we are building our collective commitment to one another, our commitment to bringing these ideas to life in all of these teachers’ classrooms, and our commitment to the community.

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       Our new teachers include: Therese Fitzpatrick (1st grade, Lusher Charter School), Dana Moyer (Kindergarten, KIPP Believe Primary), Ronique Darby (3rd grade, Einstein Charter School at Village de l’Est), Sharika Hagan (5th grade, McDonogh 32 Literacy Charter School), Paris Lovette (3rd grade, KIPP Central Primary), Matthew Tuttle (5th grade,  Morris Jeff Community School), and Brandy Watson (4th grade, Einstein Charter School at Village de l’Est). To learn more about the 2016-2017 cohort of teachers, please visit our website. 

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Room to grow

       This summer, Ripple Effect moved into its first official office space, located at the Blue House in New Orleans’s Central City neighborhood. This dedicated space affords us the advantages of space to work collaboratively, and walls upon which to hang and share our drawings and visual unit plans. being able to hand -- and share -- drawings on walls.

       We are excited to join the Blue House, which is a community where designers, writers, researchers, artists, activists, filmmakers, coders, teachers, entrepreneurs, developers, and others come together to share and shape a new kind of workspace. It is located in Central City, a culturally rich neighborhood in the heart of New Orleans, and also where Ripple Effect first began in classrooms at KIPP Central City Primary.

       In the 1930s, Jewish and Irish immigrants and African Americans first settled in Central City, which became one of city’s first integrated neighborhoods, and eventually the nexus of the Civil Rights movement in New Orleans. A once-booming commercial corridor, many Central City merchants suffered due to white flight in the 60s and 70s. Today, Central City’s a cluster of businesses, institutions, nonprofits -- many focused on arts, culture, and serving local youth -- is re-emerging along Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard.

       Located just off of OC Haley, the Blue House seeks to contribute to the community through a weekly coffee and speaker series, exhibitions featuring local artists, film screenings, and reading groups, all of which are open to the public.  Exploring,, creating, and sharing is what Ripple Effect is all about, and we are so happy to have found an ideal place where we can work, and to be part of the revitalization of an important neighborhood. Being in Central City means that we will have many opportunities to learn from and share with the many inspiring organizations and institutions that call Central City home.

You can read more about the Blue House on their website: thebluehousenola.com

And learn more about historic Central City at:  http://www.healinghistories.org

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Ripple Effect today

       The 2016-2017 school year will build upon the lessons learned during our pilot year. While still focused on grade levels K through 5, for the first time, our teacher cohort will include teachers from  schools across New Orleans, thanks to a EPA Environmental Education grantees in 2015. Through this federal award (with matching funds provided by the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans) Ripple Effect will expand its reach by working with a more diverse and larger array of teachers, who will in turn implement Ripple Effect units in many more classrooms.   

       As part of the EPA grant, we will also administer a subgrant program through which we support local organizations also working towards the goal of building water literacy across the Gulf Coast region, with a particular focus on teacher professional development and stewardship experiences, K-12 stewardship experiences for students, workforce development and training, and sustainable community development with a particular focus on water resources.

       We are very excited to begin this next chapter in Ripple Effect’s growth, and we hope that you will follow along with us as we continue to design the best ways to teach environmental education, and learn even more about ourselves along the way!

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Ripple Effect origins

       Founded in 2013, Ripple Effect began as a three week unit in a fourth grade classroom at KIPP Central City Primary in New Orleans. Ripple Effect co-founder and teacher Claire Anderson focused the unit on the topic of water cities and urban water management. 

       She invited designers from Waggonner & Ball Architects to join her in the classroom and in structuring the unit as a design challenge, in which students would learn about local water issues by asking them to solve flooding in their own school playground. And by using the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan as their textbook, students learned about waterways and green infrastructure, flooding and subsidence.  

       But even with a three week unit, we were just scratching the surface of what environmental education in twenty-first century New Orleans should be. With the support of the Sewerage & Water Board of New Orleans, Ripple Effect has evolved into a growing community of teachers, water experts, and design educators who plan, test, and advance new strategies for fostering environmental stewardship through in-school instruction. 

       Together, we develop design-based environmental science curriculum that meets rigorous national science and engineering standards, while providing students with the skills they will need to lead their communities in an era of climate change and sea-level rise.

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Welcome to the Ripple Effect Bulletin!

       This will be our forum for exploring in depth the big ideas, questions, and real-life challenges that drive Ripple Effect. These include concepts like water literacy, climate change, student impact, design education, and more. We will be writing about water and its relationship to our lives in New Orleans, the Mississippi River Delta, and the world. 

       We will spotlight the diverse array of professionals -- scientists, artists, advocates, policymakers, designers, engineers, and environmentalists -- who inspire us. Our teachers will post here about their Ripple Effect experiences, share student work, and showcase the impact of their lessons. As Ripple Effect expands to its first year of full programmatic implementation, we want to use this Bulletin as a place to ask ourselves what environmental stewardship means, how we foster it, and why the future demands it.