McKinley Students Tour Flooded Neighborhoods
Seventh grade students from McKinley Middle School toured the Czech Village neighborhood and the Indian Creek Nature Center as part of a classroom assignment. Both areas were badly damaged in the June floods.
The tours align with the District’s seventh grade curriculum unit, “Erosion and Weathering”, which is based on a fictitious town in California. Teachers at several District middle schools worked together to develop a companion piece to the curriculum, using the local flood and rebuilding process of Cedar Rapids. McKinley students were the first to tour; other middle schools are expected to make visits to the areas yet this spring.
“It is important for students to have hands-on experiences and information about why we had such historic flooding in Cedar Rapids, the possibility of it happening again, and what we can do as to prevent such wide-spread destruction from happening again,” explained Jennifer Olson, teacher. “We also want students to get involved in the rebuilding process – the final project for this unit will be for each student to write a letter to City Council, detailing our findings and/or their recommendations. We so often on teaching the hypothetical situation and really wanted something we could dig into that was real, current, and literally in our back yard.”
To prepare for the tours, students studied a topographic map of downtown Cedar Rapids, showing the 100 year flood plain, 500 year flood plain, and the actual area that was flooded in June 2008. They also built their own 3-dimensional models of the maps.
“One of the concepts in this unit is the understanding and use of topographic maps, which can be a fairly abstract and difficult thing for middle school students to do,” Olson noted. “We felt that if they were able to see a 3-dimensional version, they would better understand how the contour lines illustrate different elevations; and in relation to the flood, why certain areas did or did not get flooded. “
The tour will show students two areas of the community that were seriously impacted by the flood so they can observe the long term effects of the flooding and are able to ask focused questions about the rebuilding process.
“We purposefully chose one area that would focus more on the environmental impact and one that will focus on residential and business side of the damage,” Olson explained.
In preparation for the tours, teachers also worked with the education director of the National Czech and Slovak Museum. The museum is preparing a new flood exhibit. The student tour project will help to develop the walking tour piece of that exhibit.