With the one year anniversary of Katrina and Rita recently past, LSU researchers have shed light as to how educators dealt with the chaos and questions in classroom communities following two of the country’s most devastating natural disasters.

The National Science Foundation and the Board of Regents’ Louisiana Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (LA EPSCoR) funded nearly $100,000 for the project conducted by College of Education Associate Professor Teresa Buchanan, School of Human Ecology Professor Diane Burts, and School of Social Work Associate Professor Timothy Page. The researchers collected information about both teachers’ responses to and students’ knowledge of the 2005 hurricanes.

To understand the educator side of the storm response, the group surveyed teachers’ and schools’ activities following the storms. In all, 344 teachers in Louisiana, 93 in Tennessee, 77 from South Carolina, and 78 from Georgia completed surveys that described what school response, planned teacher-directed activities and spontaneous student-led activities took place in the weeks immediately following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

They reported that school-wide responses differed according to location. As expected, Louisiana schools did significantly more school-wide activities than schools in any other state. A few common examples of these school-wide activities involved collecting or providing educational materials such as classroom supplies or toys for evacuee children and providing materials for evacuee families like clothing or dishes.

One of the most surprising findings of the study was that there were no significant differences in teacher-planned classroom activities based on location. The LSU research team found that teachers reported doing approximately the same amount of planned activities in their classrooms no matter where in the country they were located—state, school district, or hurricane-prone area.

“We expected to find a flurry of classroom activity in the Gulf Coast not only about weather but about hurricane safety. Instead, the coastal states did not adjust their classroom instruction anymore than Tennessee—where people don’t worry about a direct hit from a Category 4 hurricane,” said Buchanan, the principal investigator for the project.

Buchanan was most surprised to find that Louisiana teachers didn’t seem to direct any more of their classroom activities toward helping children understand the hurricane-related events, “I think teachers were operating under the impression that it would have been harmful to the children if they had  discussed the hurricanes in their classrooms. There are a lot of misunderstandings out there about what to do in a classroom following a crisis.”

In contrast to those findings, the researchers found that children varied greatly in self-initiated activities in the classroom based on their locations. Children in Louisiana initiated significantly more spontaneous activities related to hurricanes than children in other states. The most frequent activities involved children telling stories about Katrina or hurricanes, discussing Katrina or hurricane-related events in the classroom with the teacher, and discussing Katrina or other hurricane-related events among themselves.

Another significant finding of the study dealt with grade-level learning. Pre-kindergarten and kindergarten teachers who teach children ages four to five did fewer things related to hurricanes or weather than primary grade teachers who teach children ages six to eight. The researchers found that the most common classroom activities were related to reading stories about weather, lecturing about hurricanes, or teaching a unit or theme or conducting a project about weather.

Second-grade teacher Stephanie Sarver provided a clear illustration of outstanding hurricane-related classroom activities. At E.K. Key Elementary School in Sulphur, Louisiana, Sarver based her lessons off of the Louisiana Comprehensive Curriculum and grade-level expectations. Those guidelines include sections that address community problems and engage the students in discussions about community problems. Among other activities, Sarver adapted these units after the hurricanes by commissioning her students to create Hurricane Rita commemorative stamps for a make believe relief fund.

The students also were required to come to a collective decision about how to use the funds raised by the stamps. They decided that the stamp revenue should be used to fix all the “blue roofs,” clean up the trash, build an animal shelter, and and buy food for hungry people and animals.

“This school really rolled out the red carpet for us. We arrived to hand-made signs addressed to the LSU research team that read ‘Welcome LSU.’ They were excited to be a part of this hurricane project,” recalled Buchanan.

“We were glad they were part of the sample because we were able to see Mrs. Sarver’s terrific response to the hurricanes. We believe she demonstrated model teaching. Other teachers in the sample had equally impressive responses, but she did a particularly good job describing her teaching to the research team.”

To better understand learning outcomes associated with teaching practices, the researchers measured the children’s knowledge about hurricanes. For this sample, 15 teachers were selected in a stratified random sample taken from the returned Louisiana teacher surveys. The researchers selected three teachers from each grade who conducted various levels of hurricane-related activities in the class. The researchers then randomly selected and interviewed children in these classrooms to assess their understanding of hurricanes.

The six district sample of interviewees consisted of 108 children, ranging in grade levels from pre-kindergarten to third grade. Most of the children came from communities directly hit by the hurricanes with a significant percentage of children in the sample who experienced evacuation, injury, relocation to temporary housing or shelters, cohabitation with evacuees, or loss of property.

Two members of the team of interviewers went to each of the 15 schools for two days conducting interviews with the children using a new modification of the narrative story-stem methodology. Story-stem methodology uses children’s stories to assess attachment, an approach Page uses in his line of research. The research team adapted the methodology to assess knowledge of hurricanes. In this case, the researchers used six scenarios in which the children interacted with wooden human figures, farm animals, a city scape, cars and boats, and doll houses. The researchers filmed each interview, reviewed the footage and coded the children’s responses for statistical analysis.

“These were prompts that encouraged the children to tell stories. We started the story and the child finished it while we observed their words and actions for evidence of their knowledge about hurricanes in general and Katrina and Rita in particular,” said Buchanan.

The preliminary analyses of these stories indicated that the children understood the direct effects of the hurricanes. There was very strong evidence that the children knew that trees fell down or broke, that people left their homes to evacuate, that houses were damaged, and that streets and houses flooded. Most children told stories that showed they understood that hurricanes are weather systems that can be destructive, often have heavy rain and strong winds, and that there is a hurricane season. Very few stories indicated knowledge of other characteristics or causes of hurricanes.

Ana Morales Boone, a doctoral student in the College of Education, was one of the interviewers in the project. She gained first-hand insight into the students’ responses to the project by traveling to seven classrooms and conducting an average of 16 interviews per school.

“The children would take the little people figurines and immediately put them in the dollhouse attic to get them away from the water,” said Morales Boone.

“In one scenario, the children would position the dolls in front of the television to discuss warnings about hurricanes and what they should do,” said Morales Boone, adding, “They would have pretend conversations about hurricanes. These preschoolers would use the word ‘evacuation’ and tell the wooden ‘friend’ about going to shelters.”

Morales Boone said that it was touching and sometimes heartbreaking to see such young children’s dramatic reactions to storms, giving her an appreciation for what children and teachers experienced during this difficult time. The interviews also gave Morales Boone another appreciation as well, that of the research process. Morales Boone collected and analyzed social science data from the test and pilot stage through the interview, review and coding process, offering a complete tour of the complex research cycle.

“I worked with LSU faculty, staff, students and researchers from other universities and disciplines. I met with community members and educators from all over the area. And, I participated in every aspect of the project,” said Morales Boone.

“I was involved with the development of our survey instrument, our methodology, our interviews,” she said, adding “I have a profound respect for all of the work researchers invest in these projects…not to mention the time and intellectual commitment it takes to get an article published and present the findings.”

Morales Boone will present these findings with the LSU faculty team at the Louisana Early Childhood Association conference and the research team also has submitted proposals to several national meetings including the American Educational Research Association and the Society for Research in Child Development.

With most of the preliminary analyses underway, the researchers will have an interesting picture to paint at these professional meetings. While the teachers were hesitant to change lessons to directly tackle the 2005 weather phenomena, the children themselves were eager to address these powerful storms.  The picture that emerges could help teachers know how to respond to disasters that might occur in their own communities.