Ripple Effect

A huge thank you to all our generous donors!! $5,520 raised from 35 donors. Every dollar directly supports instruction in New Orleans .

GiveNOLA started at midnight and goes until 11:59pm tonight. Whether you give $10, $20, $200 or $1000, every donation makes an impact. Every dollar we raise directly supports our Fellows—teachers who spend extra time on nights and weekends learning, practicing, and planning instruction for their students. These teachers pilot new curriculum and teaching tactics. They are the innovation core of the organization. Show some love for your city. Show some love for Ripple Effect!

If you love Ripple Effect and want to support our work, give whatever feels right to you. Whether it’s $5, $20, or $50, every drop makes a difference. As always, GiveNOLA funds help cover stipends for teachers who do a Ripple Effect Fellowship.

Fellowships are the core of Ripple Effect innovation; every year, we use these small but intense experiences to develop and test new and improved approaches to teacher professional development, curriculum design, or assessment that then become part of RE’s larger projects with schools and districts.

Shoutout to the amazing Karen Marshall who is leading all the field based testing procedures this weekend! We have our first outdoor field adventure with Invisible Rivers teachers on Saturday, so Karen and I headed out to Crevasse 22 to make short videos for testing salinity, temperature, PH, and turbidity. Our goal is to ensure all our teachers not only feel comfortable doing these protocols themselves, but that they also feel confident in getting an entire classroom of students to run these protocols independently. File this under every or Louisiana State Performance Expectation where students must ask questions that can be investigated, plan and carry out investigations, or analyze and interpret data.

THANK YOU to everyone who showed their support for Ripple Effect during our end-of-year Elevate campaign! Together, we raised over $7,000. All funds will help pay for this year’s Teacher Fellowship program, including stipends for teachers and visiting experts, transportation for teacher and student field trips, and the creation of new water literacy curriculum. What a wonderful way to end the year. Best wishes and happy holidays from the entire RE team and family.

We asked our board members and partners what they love about Ripple Effect.

1. Natalie Davis, RE advisor and collaborator
2. Kristin Gunckel, RE advisor and collaborator
3. Heather Schwartz, RE board member
4. Claire Anderson, RE executive director and co-founder.

Want to stay in the loop on Ripple Effect news? Curious about water literacy resources, readings, quotes, and ideas from our broad community of stakeholders, including educators, scientists, education researchers, artists, and water-focused practitioners? Our newsletter comes out 4-5 times per year, and is the best way to know what’s happening in the world of . Click the link in our bio to sign up. All we require is your name and email address.

Compassion is an imaginative space: if I see and value your humanity, and you see and value mine, what new possibilities emerge when it comes to creating sustainable solutions? What might become of our relationship to one another? How might we relate differently to our environment? And how might we feel and think about people and places we will never see, but which are connected to us and our shared water systems?

Water literacy education brings these questions to the forefront of teacher and student learning. We know that climate and water issues require so more than technical knowledge to address. Scientists, engineers, policy makers, and other change-makers must also consider the political, ethical, and social factors that contribute to those issues in the first place. That’s why, when we teach children and youth about these issues, we have to also challenge them to think through: What’s right? What’s fair? What connections must be forged? What rifts can be healed?

These are the roots of authentic leadership and transformative change. Technical knowledge, yes, but partnered with a fierce commitment to care and compassion.

Compassion is an imaginative space: if I see and value your humanity, and you see and value mine, what new possibilities emerge when it comes to creating sustainable solutions? What might become of our relationship to one another? How might we relate differently to our environment? And how might we feel and think about people and places we will never see, but which are connected to us and our shared water systems?

Water literacy education brings these questions to the forefront of teacher and student learning. We know that climate and water issues require so more than technical knowledge to address. Scientists, engineers, policy makers, and other change-makers must also consider the political, ethical, and social factors that contribute to those issues in the first place. That’s why, when we teach children and youth about these issues, we have to also challenge them to think through: What’s right? What’s fair? What connections must be forged? What rifts can be healed?

These are the roots of authentic leadership and transformative change. Technical knowledge, yes, but partnered with a fierce commitment to care and compassion.

We partner with teachers to make sure they have the resources content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge to teach these topics with the sensitivity and depth they require.

If you want to support our mission, please consider a one-time or repeating gift to Ripple Effect Water Literacy Project. Our end-of-year giving campaign, Elevate, ends Saturday!