Since 2017, Betsy Wilkening of APW has attended the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting to present the achievements of the Recharge the Rain (RtR) project, a NOAA-sponsored Environmental Literacy Program in partnership with Watershed Management Group. It is only appropriate, at the close of this very odd year, that APW’s presentation is about Re-Imagining the Possibilities. All of us are starting to realize that these possibilities translate into new opportunities for education, communication, and connection.

 

Adaptations have been made across all aspects of the RtR program during COVID-19. These include online teacher professional development (PD) options that widened and deepened teacher knowledge and skills in new and different ways. A cornerstone of RtR was student-led design and installation of schoolyard rain gardens, which has been adapted to a Build Your Own Basin (BYOB) project to fund and support simple installations at student's homes. As you can see, Re-Imagining the Possibilities is resulting in improvements in PD and the development of new and more accessible programs.

 

These aspects and more of the RtR project, which were presented in the Education Section strand at AGU, focused on climate resilience with educators, science communicators, and researchers. This two-week virtual conference, attended by over 23,000 participants from across the world, is available on demand, though some sessions occur in the early morning and late at night. Additionally, opportunities to connect through chats, emails, social media, meeting pods, and Brain Dates are available.