Fostering Climate Resilience Through Education and Arts (2025-2026)

Background

As climate hazards increase in intensity and frequency, resilience – the ability to tolerate, absorb or adjust to stressors – is needed more than ever. Fostering resilience can incorporate strategies to support ecological, social and personal resiliency.

For example, to support ecological resiliency, community members can work to understand how local ecosystems are linked to ecological services like flood control and protection of fish habitats. To support social resiliency, diverse community sectors must participate in the formation and implementation of resiliency plans so that policies reflect the community's values, and the hazard burdens and resiliency benefits are equitably distributed. To support personal resiliency, individuals must feel connected to others in their community, fostering a sense of relatedness, support, hope and agency to work toward a future they want.

As climate threats increase, it is more important than ever for young people to learn about and practice forms of resiliency, including through education and arts programs in schools. School curricula that build environmental literacy in support of climate resilience are vital to help students gain an understanding of socio-ecological systems, skills for engaging in environmental solutions and dispositions necessary for action now and into the future.

Project Description

Building on the work of a previous team, this project team will expand a middle school resilience curriculum to include puppetry and create youth-led puppetry resilience story community events to expand the role of education, art and storytelling in fostering environmental literacy and resiliency. The team will analyze data from the 2024-2025 curriculum implementation to see what needs to be changed, amended and improved, including expanding this curriculum to include puppetry.

In 2025-2026, team members will pilot resilience fable puppetry and literacy activities. During the school year the project team will prepare lessons to deliver with Durham and Carteret middle school teachers. Team members will create and utilize a common resilience language that will involve a series of deep dives into ecological, personal and social resilience. They will then break into subteams to work on curriculum updates, pilot puppetry design kits and teacher/classroom curriculum support. 

Throughout the process, the team will collaborate with community partners and middle school educators and their students in Durham and Carteret Counties to plan and design community art and story-telling puppetry events on resilience and nature. In addition to organizing and leading events, the team will gather community feedback and evaluate events to refine plans for future iterations.

Anticipated Outputs

Updated middle school resilience curriculum; puppetry evaluation framework; kid-led community puppetry events on resilience and nature in Durham and Carteret Counties; community partnerships

Student Opportunities

Ideally, this project team will include 2-5 graduate students and 3-6 undergraduates with backgrounds in art, English, divinity, social sciences, education, environmental sciences and biological sciences.

Applicants should be enthusiastic about the opportunity to engage with educators and middle school-aged students. Authentic community engagement will be a cornerstone of this resilience project, and the team will be equally focused on the process of inclusion and collaboration within the group as well as inclusions and collaboration for the community event products. Applicants should also be willing to listen to new and different voices and willing to collaborate and create a shared vision of community events.

Team members will learn to create environmental education curriculum components and co-create community events that use puppetry to explore resilience and nature. Students will gain experience authentically engaging with local partners and evaluating the success of community events with qualitative and quantitative instruments. Students will also be trained in cultural competence to understand the local cultural context and have the ability to adapt their approach to different individuals and organizations. Graduate students will also be able to serve as managers for subgroups and oversee undergraduate work.

This project has an optional summer component in which students will evaluate puppetry prototypes and literacy activities using feedback from the Duke Marine Lab Community Science Initiative summer camps.

During the year, the team will meet weekly in a hybrid setting that includes both the Durham and Marine lab campuses. Students based in Durham will have the opportunity to travel to the Marine Lab in the fall or spring semester.

Timing

Summer 2025 – Spring 2026

• Summer 2025 (optional): Pilot resilience fable puppetry and literacy activities; create and assess puppetry prototypes; create project timeline
• Fall 2025: Prepare and deliver resilience lessons with middle school teachers in Durham and Carteret Public Schools; deliver puppetry and curriculum workshops; prepare and plan for community puppetry performances; create puppetry evaluation template
• Spring 2026: Deliver resilience lessons with middle school teachers in Durham and Carteret Public Schools; deliver puppetry workshop on performance (movement and breath with outside experts); plan and deliver community puppetry performances; evaluate success of events  

Crediting

Academic credit available for fall and spring semesters; summer funding available

See earlier related team Fostering Climate Resilience Through Education and Arts (2024-2025).