Lisa Gilbert: Teaching Natural Hazards and Risks: Hurricanes in Oceanographic Processes at Williams-Mystic

Unit 1 & Unit 2 (taught in the first class period)

Unit 1:

0930-0932: Outline of today's class and reviewed last time, briefly.

0932-0945: Discussed their homework Assessment 1 (Microsoft Word 811kB Aug26 14), a risk calculation. Assessment 1: Student Responses (Acrobat (PDF) 4.8MB Mar26 13). Assessment 1: Grading Rubric (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 32kB Mar25 13).

• Most students used Mystic as their location, but a few used other places. As a group, we compared the risk among Connecticut, New York, Boston, southern Maine, and southern Florida.
• Everyone seemed to plug & chug the formula just fine, but students were confused about "frequency" and "return period." We reviewed the caption, then one student volunteered to explain the difference clearly to the class.
• Note: this handout could be reworded in terms of insurance policy to make more sense—there was some confusion in class about units.

0945-0955: Activity 1.2I asked students what the take-home messages were from the Jared Diamond (2013) article.

• We digressed into a discussion of life expectancy for two minutes because of Diamond's statement about how his life expectancy is 90 now that he has made it to 78, which is what it would have been at birth. I asked how long they thought they would live; eight said into their 80s, and four said 90s. I asked what that was based on and they replied "grandparent longevity" and "improving health care" and "optimism." One student brought up something they had heard in Maritime History about how life expectancy is shorter for their generation than their parents' because of obesity and drug/alcohol use. Another student offered something she had read about how rural life expectancy is shorter than urban because of health care and availability of healthy food in some locations.

0955-1005: Hazard & Risk Activity 1.1—think, pair share. Photo of their responses on the board:

1005-1015: Sharing thoughts on Sandy last fall. One student (who was here last semester) described all that was done at Mystic Seaport and in the student houses to mitigate risk, including evacuating up to the very classroom where we sit. I briefly compared my own decision process to evacuate in Hurricane Irene but not for Sandy, as a preview to Activity 6.

Unit 2:

• First: list the key characteristics of a hurricane in your notes.

• Five students shared one characteristic. Their responses: high winds (one student volunteered 74 mph), rotating winds, low pressure, eye in center, lots of rain.
• We discussed that they nailed it! And then I gave them a formal definition (low P system with winds > 74 mph). I also pointed to the Saffir-Simpson scale in their handout (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 5.7MB Mar21 13) and told them the categories were simplified a few years ago to just winds (used to be pressure, surge, and winds).

• Next: students asked questions as I moved through the images in the slides.

1025-1031: Can a hurricane cross the equator?

• Think, pair, share, while looking at hurricane tracks 1851-2012.
• First: I asked for thumbs up/down, and all 12 of them gave me thumbs down.
• Then, they talked with a neighbor about "why not?" for 3 minutes.
• In sharing, one student said, "The equator acts like a wall of low pressure," and another student said, "Coriolis is in the other direction, so a hurricane would have to start and stop, and then is it the same hurricane?"
• Another student asked, "What was the one hurricane in the South Atlantic?" I told the story of Catarina surprising Brazilians in 2004. This brought us back to our discussion of risk from the beginning of class (why would Brazilians do anything to prepare if hurricanes are so rare?).
• Students asked about names. We discussed the different names for hurricanes in different ocean basins (they are reading Conrad's Typhoon for Literature of the Sea class next week), and how names rotate and get retired.

1031-1043: Hurricane formation continued.

• These felt a little rushed, because I knew I only had 15 minutes left.
• Students asked about the two surges and if you could tell which was which in a hurricane (we talked about wind shift and recalled our time out at sea and tracking the movement of lows and highs).

1043 – 1050: Draw! (Additional Embedded Assessment A (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 27kB Mar28 13) and Embedded Assessment A: Student Responses (Acrobat (PDF) 2.4MB Mar21 13)).

Students kept working 5 minutes past the end of class. As they finished . . .

• I wrote a summary on the board
• I handed some of Activity 1.3 as a homework assignment Assessment 1 homework (Microsoft Word 811kB Aug26 14) and reminded students to bring their laptops to class next time.

Unit 3 & Unit 5 (taught during the second class period)

Unit 3:

Teaching Tip: With a small class, it was easy to help students with the Hurricane Tracker (Activity 3.2) on their laptops. I had them work in pairs, to help each other, too, and this strategy could help manage a slightly larger class. However, each instructor will have their own limit for how many laptop pairs they consider manageable. For large classes, the computer-rich activities might be better in a lab session or as homework.

0930-0932: Reviewed schedule highlighting other storms-related coursework they are doing.

0932-1000: Discussed homework question: Are we in a high-activity or low-activity hurricane era?

• Used slides from Activity 3.3
• This took too long; next time I might eliminate the assignment and this part altogether or allow more time.

1000-1038: Activity 3.2 Hurricane tracker. We skipped Activity 3.1 because we had done many chart exercises and practical navigation/piloting in the first few weeks of the course.

A) With a partner, explore Sandy's track.

• First, I suggested they just play around a bit with the functions.
• Then, I listed questions to guide their work:

1. Positions are ___ hours apart
• The answer ended up being more nuanced than I expected from my own exploration of the hurricane tracker (positions were not plotted at consistent intervals, which led into an interesting discussion).
2. Maximum size (Category) on the Saffir-Simpson scale? When and where?
3. When and where was landfall in the lower 48? Wind speed then?
• Note: I had several of them ask me what the term "lower 48" meant.
4. Where and when was the hurricane moving the fastest?
5. Other interesting observations?

B) With a partner, examine historic hurricane tracks.

1. How many hurricanes made landfall in Connecticut 1851-2010?
2. Recurrence interval (average time between hurricanes) in Connecticut?
• = total years / # hurricanes
• (e.g., 150 years / 10 hurr = 15 years/hurricane)
3. Recurrence interval of major hurricanes in Connecticut?
4. Make a list of hurricanes that may have caused the sand layer we found 4 cm below the surface at Barn Island Marsh. First consider your assumptions:
   

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   Marsh core sketch, drawn by student Rachel Neurath

   Provenance: Lisa Gilbert, Cabrillo College
   Reuse: If you wish to use this item outside this site in ways that exceed fair use (see http://fairuse.stanford.edu/) you must seek permission from its creator.

• Date range?
• Possible landfall states?
• Hurricane categories?

The hurricane tracker exploration worked very well; students were engaged and asked good questions. Students figured out the hurricane layer we saw in a marsh core we took was probably from Hurricanes Bob or Gloria. Embedded assessment: Embedded Assessment B: Student Responses. (Acrobat (PDF) 743kB Mar28 13)

Unit 5:

1038-1042: Hazards and risks over time (handout (Class 2) (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 1.2MB Mar28 13)) from Unit 5.

I instructed the students to examine the data table from Activity 5.1 and discuss with their partner.

• Change in hazard? ("No")
• Change in risk? ("Yes, more $, fewer deaths")

We discussed coastal development, briefly, examining the images from Activity 5.2.

• Note: I would have liked more time with this, having students make observations/comparisons.

• Note: Assessment 2 (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 52kB Mar28 13) relates to this, and will be given as an exam question.

1042-1048: I outlined the costs of preparing for a hurricane.

• Students asked good questions, and about half the class participated in the discussion. (Examples: Whose money is this? Is this in federal/local budgets? What if that is not enough?)

1049: Summary

1050: Assigned reading for Thursday (New York Times article on Hurricane Isaac from Unit 6), and asked students to "bring a list of stakeholders in a hurricane evacuation."

Unit 4 & Unit 6 (taught during the third class period)

Unit 4:

0930-0932: Outline, summary of what we have done with hurricanes so far, goals for end of class today, think ahead to next week in our Field Seminar to Louisiana.

0932-0950: Based on Unit 4), we compared impacts from Irene (2011) and Sandy (2012). Students had a handout (Class 3) (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 401kB Mar28 13) of key images in front of them, which they asked me questions about, I asked them questions about, etc.

0950-1000: How did people's experiences in the Northeast in Irene (2011) influence their decisions leading up to Sandy (2012)?

• We watched a video (MP4 Video 22.2MB Nov2 12) of a Mystic Seaport Staff member discussing Irene and Sandy evacuations.
• Class discussion after the video.

1000-1010: Stakeholders in an evacuation (students volunteered a list that I wrote on board, which was based on their assigned reading of the New York Times August 28, 2012, article on Hurricane Isaac).

And what goes into an evacuation decision? (They volunteered: science/NHC predictions of when/where/magnitude, local hazard assessments (e.g., flood zones), risk to population, etc.) We also discussed that the president of the United States does not decide, nor does the governor—both are involved in issuing a state of emergency, but local evacuation is done by town/county/parish officials.

Unit 6:

Teaching tip: Since I teach in an interdisciplinary program, students requested that next time we are doing more policy-heavy topics (particularly Unit 6), our policy professor be invited to contribute. While not necessary, bringing in a guest instructor or moderator for the debate might help students internalize the importance of the interdisciplinary perspective for natural hazards policy.

1010-1039: Evacuation exercise Evacuation scenario student handout (Acrobat (PDF) 410kB Jul17 14) from Unit 6. Students worked in pairs for 10 minutes: I assigned each group one of our local stakeholders. Then, they presented their recommendation for evacuation (all said yes, varying time of evacuation based on interests) to the group. There was student-student discussion and I wrote on the board. Stakeholders we used: (1) fire department, (2) department of transportation, (3) scientists from the Connecticut DEP, (4) owners of the Drawbridge Ice Cream Shop, (5) the local Red Cross chapter, and (6) the director of Williams-Mystic (functions like president of a college in decisions like this).

1039-1044: Assessment Assessment 3 (Microsoft Word 2007 (.docx) 42kB Mar28 13): Students wrote an in-class essay for 5 minutes on the complexity of making a decision to evacuation and their own thoughts on evacuation. Assessment 3: Student Responses (Acrobat (PDF) 1017kB Mar28 13).

1044-1045: Summary and what to look for, and questions to ask people, on the Louisiana field seminar next week.

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I was also able to teach an abbreviated case study in Fall 2012, during Hurricane Sandy.

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