Presented by: Katya Schloesser

The impacts of climate change are being felt across the country, with wildfire seasons getting longer and more severe and flooding occurring more frequently. Colorado has experienced significant extreme weather events in the last ten years and, consequently, has begun a statewide effort to incorporate resilience into short- and long-term planning across state and local governments. As cities and counties undergo resilience planning processes, today's students (tomorrow's leaders) are often unaware of these efforts and are left out of the planning process. The HEART Force curriculum empowers students with the knowledge needed to participate (and lead) the resilience conversation in their own community, with place-based hazard education that includes a scenario-based role-play game and design thinking to create resilience strategies in their community. The curricular unit culminates with a resilience expo, where students engage with community members as resilience experts and share their ideas. HEART is a novel approach in that it uses several current instructional strategies (place-based learning, project-based learning, gamification, and design thinking) to empower students to engage with their community. If students want to implement their resilience projects that arise from the curriculum, mini-grants are available to fund projects. The HEART program is currently in its second year of piloting in rural and urban Colorado schools. We will present preliminary evaluation findings and share curriculum and program design strategies.