STARKVILLE – Malorie Miles, a seventh-grader at The Partnership Middle School, remembers watching from her front door as her neighborhood experienced flash flooding in 2022.
The rainfall from the storm over several hours crept its way from the street and pooled around her front yard.
For the last four years, Miles has sought answers to the science behind that flash flooding, and only recently got the chance to seriously learn about it earlier this school year as part of a special project.
“I wanted to understand why floods occur and why they last,” Miles said. “Because I can understand the rain coming down, and (why) it (floods) for the first few minutes, but then after the rain’s gone, I was really interested to learn why doesn’t the water just quickly drain away?”
This spring, alongside roughly 27 classmates, Miles asked National Weather Service scientists questions as part of a collaboration project with the “Orbit: Science for kids on the move!” podcast about extreme weather events and their impact in Starkville.
The podcasting effort is part of the Sowing Environmental Multilingualism, Integrating Learning, Linguistics and Action in Science project, which is co-led by Mississippi State University Assistant Professor of English Lourdes Cardozo-Gaibasso alongside Ayça Fackler of the University of Missouri.
The project, which is funded by a more than $427,000 grant from the Gulf Research Program of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, began at The Partnership School in 2025. The project’s primary goal is researching and developing methods to improve climate science literacy among students, especially students of color, with lessons rooted in their lived experiences with weather in Starkville.
“Interest needs to emerge from the students rather than what the curriculum imposes,” Cardozo-Gaibasso said. “And so sometimes when you talk about an abstract concept, especially in science, which seems so detached from students’ everyday lives, children don’t think about the fact that science is embedded in everything we do every day. … How can you bring your quote-unquote problems from your community, issues that you have from your community, into your lessons? That’s the type of (learning) we want to foster.”
Inspiring curiosity
The project in its first year focused on lesson plan recommendations and hands-on activities aimed at applying climate science to students’ experiences with flash flooding and how strong winds can cause structural damage during a storm.
After seeing success in its first year with both students and faculty, Cardozo-Gaibasso said researchers started looking for loftier projects during their second year. That search eventually led to the group finding CumbreKids Media, a production company that makes STEM-related podcasts for children.
Cardozo-Gaibasso said Fackler pitched the idea earlier this year about partnering with the CumbreKids group for “Orbit: Science for kids on the move!,” an educational podcast they had already developed, but spinning episodes to be focused on questions from Partnership Middle School students on weather-related issues like flooding and hurricanes that are common in the Golden Triangle.
“It was more about the topics that children were interested in, and that may have a direct impact on the life quality we have in Mississippi,” Cardozo-Gaibasso said. “And also thinking about how that affects other parts of our lives when a storm comes, and it destroys crops, it’s not just about the weather. It’s also about food prices and how that affects our quality of life.”
After signing on, roughly 28 students then got their chance to hit the airwaves by recording questions related to those topics, which were fielded by a National Weather Service hydrologist and meteorologist on two episodes of the show.
In each of the two 20-minute episodes, the students partnered on questions like how these severe weather events occur, how meteorologists detect and monitor floods and hurricanes and how the severity of a hurricane is determined.
Aniece Hill, a seventh-grader at Partnership Middle School, asked how residents in the impact area of a hurricane can best prepare for an incoming hurricane. Hill said she was excited to be selected, and listening to the episodes prompted her to do additional research about flood mitigation.
“After the podcast … I started researching on how they built levees and how they can block flooding, and it was interesting,” Hill said.
Miles, who was selected to co-host the two episodes alongside show host Robert Carpenter, said she enjoyed getting to hear questions from her classmates and discuss their takeaways from each episode.
“It did build on my interest in science, because at first I wasn’t a really big science person,” Miles said. “… But doing this podcast has made me realize that science can be more interesting, and it can be fun to learn about.”
Cardozo-Gaibasso said after fielding this initial group of students, this fall she plans to partner on additional Spanish-speaking episodes with the podcast producers and develop a camp during the fall with community speakers and other hands-on climate learning activities for students at the school.
Hill and Miles agreed they both feel more confident and engaged in their classes and now look to think more critically about the lessons they’re taught in school.
“A lot of teachers have explained to me why things happen or what happens when it rains outside and what causes that, but they never really explained the aftermath,” Miles said. “… And (now I know) there are other side effects of weather after that.”
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 30 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
