Rural Arizona Water Education: Creating Opportunities with Smithsonians WaterWay (ASUF30007747)

Rural Arizona Water Education: Creating Opportunities with Smithsonians WaterWay (ASUF30007747) Rural Arizona Water Education: Creating Opportunities with Smithsonians WaterWays & DCDCs WaterSim One core mission of ASU, Smithsonian Institution (SI), and Arizona Humanities (AH) is to help people understand issues critical to their future. Past generations created our current water systems, but new generations will need to develop building blocks for future water sustainability. Today rural areas are struggling with water issues yet research shows rural youth lack connections to local history and a sense of belonging and engagement. Engaging youth in conversations about community can reignite their desire to engage in their communities. Our partnership proposes reaching out to grade 7-16 teachers and students to create a platform of education and engagement that inspires current and future generations to address this challenge. We propose to take advantage of existing activities, SIs Water/Ways and WaterStories and Decision Center for a Desert Citys (DCDC) WaterSim, to provide rural teachers with tools to integrate sustainable water issues into standard-based classroom activities. SIs Water/Ways exhibition will travel to 12 rural Arizona communities from 2018-2020. While visiting Water/Ways, students explore the critical role water plays in human society and culture on a local to national level. In the classrooms, WaterSim Arizona will provide a unique hands-on, state-of-the-art immersive visualization modeling tool to understand the complexity of water sustainability. Using WaterStories, students can express personal stories about water in their culture and communities. We propose recruiting teachers from school districts within and around these communities to be trained and provided a curriculum and activities to integrate the Water/Ways exhibition, WaterSim Arizona, and WaterStories into their STEM and humanities classroom activities. A stipend will cover their time in the project. We propose using students WaterStories to engage community groups in discussion about water sustainability. AH and working with the project coordinator and teachers, will facilitate local community collaborations to host events where students present WaterStories and the community engages in discussions about local water sustainability.