ES Complexity Builds Resilience: Building Oyster Reefs and Community Connections
 Complexity Builds Resilience: Building Oyster Reefs and Community Connections
Track I: How can your school contribute to community resilience?
Track I sessions offered participants opportunities to learn how schools can help to build community resilience on multiple scales, including through individual well-being and personal resilience, teacher-student initiatives at school and in the larger community, and/or collaboration with community partners. Schools can provide climate change education, which is the foundation for climate preparedness and community resilience, and sessions in Track I gave participants knowledge, skills, and resources that empower them to work through their schools to build community resilience.
Restore Urbanna Creek is a community project connecting schools, non-profit organizations, public utility companies, and government agencies in order to build oyster reefs in Urbanna Creek that will improve the water quality. Oyster reefs are complex ecosystems, and to build them requires complex communications between many people working toward one goal. Many people collaborating on a regular basis builds a healthier more resilient community. Oysters in the Chesapeake Bay are iconic symbols of sustainability as they provide jobs, strengthen the local economy, and improve the environment by filtering water and providing habitat. Restore Urbanna Creek improves water quality, builds stewards for the future, and brings people closer together to solve complex, authentic problems.
Presenter: Will Smiley, High School Science Teacher, Christchurch School, Christchurch, Virginia and Project Manager of Restore Urbanna Creek
