IMPROVING DISASTER LITERACY AMONG MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS FOR ENHANCED COMMUNITY RESILIENCE

An important factor affecting the resilience of a community to natural hazards is the availability of local knowledge about a community’s vulnerabilities, available through prevalent training and education practices, as well as a community’s shared belief in addressing hardships. In this context, introducing important concepts associated with natural hazards and disaster preparedness within K-12 curriculum has significant value in enhancing the resilience of a community. This talk presents the plans of Wichita State University’s Disaster Resilience Analytics Center to host a five-day workshop for middle school teachers for the purpose of creating badge lessons for implementation in middle-school classroom. The lessons will leverage existing NASA materials related to natural hazards and will also focus on data analysis to understand the preparedness of at-risk communities. We will also discuss the organization of the workshop that ensures, on one hand, the dissemination of information, tools, and skills related to natural hazards, and on the other hand, enables participation in group collaborations to design related classrooms activities. The talk will also cover the methodology to be used in the evaluation of the workshop. An important focus is the recruitment of teachers from schools that serve underrepresented students in STEM and that serve areas at risk from natural hazards.