Strategic Partnerships

With mission-aligned partners, we investigate and address some of the toughest questions in K–12 environmental education.

  • We collaborate with science and education researchers across the Gulf Coast and Mississippi River watershed to explore new frontiers in environmental science and sustainability education.

  • We work with partners to understand how to help K–12 teachers and students access the scientific knowledge held by the Indigenous communities around them.

  • Through small-scale pilot projects with community-based partners, we are learning how to ethically source and integrate community knowledge into curriculum and teaching.

  • We participate in collective impact initiatives to improve students’ access to high-quality environmental education across the state.

Challenges we see

Why is it so hard to provide students with high-quality environmental education across an entire school district or statewide? What is the potential for arts and science integration in water literacy education? What is water literacy, exactly?

These are some of the questions that educators and researchers are asking in environmental education. In our work with teachers and students, we see evidence of the incredible impact that transformative environmental education experiences can have on student and teacher knowledge, abilities, and beliefs. And yet, there is still so much we don’t know about how students most effectively learn about the environment and so many constraints in public K–12 education that can either help or hinder the development of culturally and locally relevant environmental science instruction.

Our approach

Through special projects and partnerships, we define obstacles and investigate solutions to providing transformational water literacy education for all K–12 students, then share what we’ve learned to grow the field of environmental education.

  • Collaborate with education and science researchers, community partners, and water experts across the Gulf Coast and the Mississippi River watershed to explore new frontiers in environmental science education

  • Establish multi-year partnerships with school districts to understand what it takes to catalyze standards-based science teaching across multiple schools and classrooms

  • Lead or participate in collective impact endeavors with mission-aligned organizations to define and improve students’ access to high-quality environmental education across the state 

  • Through small-scale pilot projects with community-based partners, develop and refine replicable processes for ethically sourcing and integrating community knowledge into curriculum and teaching

  • Document and disseminate our findings to facilitate uptake and understanding

Our Strategic Partnership Projects

Catalyzing standards-aligned science teaching through water literacy

A shared vision for K-12 environmental education in Louisiana

Investigating how to integrate community knowledge into science learning

Integrating art and science to understand rapid environmental change

Continue exploring our vision for water literacy education in the areas of teacher learning, curriculum design, and field-based learning.

Water Literacy Reports

In January 2020, we interviewed over 70 educators, scientists, and water-focused practitioners to better understand the environmental challenges our students will face, and the role that education must play in preparing them. The results of those conversations were synthesized into a series of reports and helped us define our vision for water literacy.

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