Article: Teachers Learn About the Levee

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Article: Students Get First Hand Look at the Levee

CLARKSDALE, Miss., June 1, 2007 — If rivers could talk, their words would fill the pages of several books.

From the evolution of the levee system to the break of 1927, the rivers are rich in history, and the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta Levee Board (YMDLB) wants to make sure that history is known.

Through its Levee Education Workshop for Teachers, teachers in grades K-12 have met every summer since 2005 to gain experience on the function of the YMDLB, levee history and how levee maintenance is important to everyone in the region.

Dr. Luther Brown with the Delta Center for Cultural Learning at Delta State oversees the program. Teachers are allowed to apply for scholarships to cover room and board during their stay. The workshops are comprised of presentations on the significance of the YMDLB, creating a curriculum for their respective classrooms and viewing the historic site where the levee broke.

“The levee break of 1927 was a truly defining moment not only in Delta history, but in American history,” Brown said.

Reggie Barnes, education consultant to the YMDLB, says that the gist of the YMDLB’s education committee is to educate the public on why the board exists and what it means to the community. 

“Most voters were not even aware that there were elections for the YMDLB commissioners,” Barnes said. “So a campaign was started involving school teachers to involve the students with the basics of the levee: the history of them, how they work and what part the river plays.”

According to Barnes, approximately 18 teachers participated in the three-day workshop its first summer. In 2006, with funding from the National Geographic Society, the workshop was expanded to 20 days. This year, it will return to its original three-day status.

“The workshops are a good tool to provide teachers with information that is disseminated to the students who in turn educate their parents,” Barnes said. “This is how we are able to successfully flow information out into the community.”

To effectively reach the students, the teachers are divided into groups to create potential lesson plans for use in their classrooms.

The final product of the workshop is the teachers’ creation of their lesson plans to be used in classrooms.

“Each module should be approximately one classroom session long and should engage students in learning about the river and the YMDLB, while being as interactive as possible,” Brown said. “Teachers should identify specific learning outcomes and explain how successful learning will be measured. They should also include a complete lesson plan that can be followed successfully by all teachers.” In addition to the Flood of 1927, responsibilities and history of the YMDLB and the evolution of the levee system, possible topics to incorporate in lesson plans include river poetry, river dynamics, the river and the Civil War and the geology of the river.

At the end of the program one lesson plan is chosen to be implemented.

“Feedback from the teachers about this program has been great, and we think that this is a program that will definitely grow as it progresses through the years,” Barnes said.