Here’s a wonderful example of a school that has taken the “Teaching The Levees” curriculum to the next level — with wonderful results.

Teachers at the Frederick Douglass High School Center for Engineering and Applied Technology (CFEAT) in Atlanta used When The Levees Broke and “Teaching The Levees” as the basis for an interdisciplinary unit that integrated math, science, English/language arts, social studies, foreign language, and technology/engineering.

The result was original student projects on a wide array of topics — everything from innovative models of underground drainage canals to protect New Orleans from future floods, to a comparison of Katrina with the 1927 Mississippi River Flood, to research on the appropriateness of the term “refugees” with regard to those displaced by Katrina.

The student projects were displayed at an exhibition at the school in early December.

Cleopatra Warren, lead teacher for social studies at the school, reports that the students went on to take first place at a local Social Studies fair and will proceed to city, regional and statewide competitions. The students are all in 11th grade and studying in her AP US History class.

“The students are excited about raising awareness regarding the Katrina disaster,” she says.

Here are descriptions of the student projects, courtesy of the Atlanta Public Schools Office of Communications:

• Tim Milton and Gerard Ujada (top right) used an interactive computer model to show how a rebuilt New Orleans could use levees to separate critical facilities, such as hospitals, from other flood-prone sections of the city. The same pair presented another proposal to use pipes running under the city to carry flood waters back into Lake Pontchartrain, at a cost of $1 million per mile of pipe. A third proposal by this pair, based on a model used in the Netherlands, would build floating homes supported by steel pillars. (That proposal would cost $18 billion, twice the cost of rebuilding standard housing.) “We hypothesized that it’s possible for New Orleans to be rebuilt as long as government is willing to pay for it,” Milton said. “And our research showed that it IS possible.”
• Luther Harris (second from top) built a model of his proposal to use underground drainage canals to relieve the pressure on levees trying to hold back more water than they were constructed to contain. The above-ground current canals that criss-cross the city could have overflow drains, much like bathtubs or wash basins.
• Jabari Seo and Micah Smith (third from top) hypothesized that the evacuations forced by Katrina resulted in a mass migration to other parts of the country, which is becoming permanent resettlement as the evacuees find new homes and jobs from Atlanta to Houston, from California to Utah.
• Naomi Barber, Royce Pearson, and Robert Dean (fourth from top) interviewed Katrina victims who fled to Atlanta after New Orleans was flooded, about whether they felt they were best described as “evacuees” or “refugees.” They found that 31 percent of those interviewed said they were “evacuees,” while only 10 percent considered themselves “refugees.” The students concluded that those displaced by Katrina were “evacuees,” because to be a “refugee” means being forced from your own country into another, “and as far as we know, New Orleans is still part of the United States,” they said.
• Aimee Turner and Bianca Poindexter (bottom) examined the correlation between Katrina and the 1927 Mississippi River flood. They found a widespread belief among New Orleaneans that some levees in poor parts of the city, such as the Lower NInth Ward, and Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes, were blown up in order to divert water away from the affluent sections and tourist attractions like the French Quarter. They concluded those beliefs were driven by the knowledge that some levees along the river were dynamited for similar reasons in 1927, resulting in the devastation of Greenville, Mississippi, and other poor communities. They also found a correlation in the sharp rise in crime — including murder, rape, and looting — during the two floods.

Ms. Warren reports “that this unit has sparked interest in thematic units within our district. Consequently, our school will serve as a model for others utilizing the small learning community model within the Atlanta Public Schools.”

Way to go, Ms. Warren! Anyone interesting in finding out more about this project can contact her directly at cwarren@atlanta.k12.ga.us.