As an aspiring teacher, I saw the Service Learning Project as a great opportunity to get some experience working in the classroom. I was fortunate enough to make contact with Karen Pownell, the science teacher at the Alternative Learning Center in Northfield, who was interested in bringing an environmental focus to her class. I hiked over to the ALC for four consecutive Wednesdays. The first day I came and observed a class to get an idea of how things worked. For the next three Wednesdays, Karen was gracious enough to turn the class period over to me and allow me to share some of the knowledge that I had been gaining throughout my Global Change Biology course.

One of the goals of the Alternative Learning Center as stated in their mission is to help students “become healthy contributing individuals in a rapidly changing society,” and I made it my goal to encourage this. I realized that I had a very limited window with which to get a message across and so I had to think very hard about what aspect of global change biology I wanted to emphasize. Furthermore, I had to think of ways to make the importance of the topic sink in.

Conferring with Karen after my day of observations, we decided that I would approach the human overpopulation problem. We felt that this was a topic with which the students I was teaching, ages 16 to 17, would find it possible to relate. Furthermore, the issue of human overpopulation branched out into many other issues concerning global change biology that I could bring up.

Karen stepped back and gave me total autonomy in teaching the class. I constructed my own lesson plan, created my own homework assignments, and for 45 minutes every Wednesday was allowed to lead class. The lesson plans took careful planning, as I had to think about how to gain and then maintain the interest of students in the classroom. The Alternative Learning Center places a strong emphasis on a small student to teacher ratio, and having a small class made it much easier for me to maintain a focus. I learned from my experiences during each class period and felt that my teaching improved every week.

Class # 1

I decided to use my first class period to introduce the students to the issue. I began class by showing a graph of the population growth over the last 500,000 years, which frighteningly illustrates the exponential nature of population growth, particularly in the last 100 years. The significance of the rapid population growth seemed better understood when I explained to the students how there are twice as many people in the world today than when their parents were children. We then brain stormed possible reasons that could account for such rapid growth over the last 100 years. The list of ideas the students came up with included a higher frequency of teen pregnancies, better doctors, new technology, cures for disease, wider range of ages for reproduction, and longer life expectancy.

I then asked why human population growth was a concern to us. We discussed many of the effects of overpopulation such as pollution, the spread of disease, habitat and species loss, and limited resources. I asked students to imagine what it would be like to live in Northfield if twice as many people lived there. Students expressed their opinion that Northfield was crowded as it was, and this led to a discussion of suburban sprawl. I then showed the students statistics regarding the relative population densities of different countries in the world (Canada and Australia = 7 people/sq. mile; Bangladesh and Indonesia = 2000 people/sq. mile) to illustrate where in the world the majority of population growth was taking place. I also asked students to consider their lifestyles and realize that Americans use far more than their fair share of resources. Considering these facts, I once again asked the students to brainstorm possible solutions they could think about for these serious global problems. The solutions they thought up included limiting the number of children families were allowed to have, increasing availability of and information about contraceptives, and also conservation of resources. I found an article on the Zero Population Growth web site entitled “Room To Live Past 6 Billion?” that I felt reiterated and helped clarify many of the topics we discussed in class and assigned it as homework along with a couple of critical thinking questions (see Appendix A).

With all of the preparation I put into my first class, I found myself finished with everything that I had planned with 20 minutes still left in class. With the help of Karen, I was able to continue facilitating an informal discussion mostly about contraceptives, which seemed to be the topic of interest, for the rest of class. Still, I learned the immense challenge of putting together a lesson plan and of the unpredictability of how each class period will go. Though I think my students were mostly receptive to the issues I brought to their attention, I knew that next week I wanted to do a better job of engaging their interests.

Class #2

Branching off the topic of overpopulation, I decided to use my second class period to discuss the gross discrepancy in resource consumption between the United States and developing nations. I felt that an effective way of talking about this would be to examine our own lives. Thus, for this day, I adapted a case study that I had done in class concerning the relationship of the food we eat to the amount of land required to yield that food. I had the students keep track of all the food they consumed in one day. In class, the students divided their food into categories (i.e. chicken, bread, cheese etc.) and figured the amount of calories to place in each. Students were given a conversion chart that showed the amount of land required to yield food for each of the categories, which they could then sum up to see the total amount of land they personally require. Unfortunately for my activity, most of the students didn’t eat very much. However, even the student who only claimed to eat 700 calories a day saw that she required more land than the average person in India (based on the total amount of land available to produce food divided by the population). Relating this discrepancy back to population growth, I asked the students to then consider the situation 50 years from now when there would be even less land available to produce food, and more people to feed (See Appendix B).

The students really enjoyed this activity, and were surprised to see the results. I think that having a hands-on learning activity really helped to maintain their interest. If nothing else, I felt that this activity made the students think about taking their lifestyles for granted. Food is something that every person can related to, and I think that examining the relationship of population growth to the resource of food was an effective way of thinking about the relationship of population growth to resources in general. Students were able to see this link, and we concluded class with a discussion about conservation.

Class #3

This was my day to wrap everything up and hopefully leave a lasting impression. Unfortunately, only three students came to class on this day. Attendance is sporadic at the ALC because many of the students also hold jobs. I put together a list of facts and statistics that I felt really hammered down the main points of which we covered over the unit (See Appendix C). We informally discussed the implications of each of the statistics and finally talked about what actions each individual person can take. The students talked about being conscious of the decisions they make concerning their lives and lifestyles. I concluded class by having the students fill out evaluations (See Appendix D) to give me personal feedback on how I could improve as a teacher and what kinds of things they learned.

Final Conclusions/Reactions

I think that I was a bit over-optimistic about the kind of impression I could make. The evaluations that I received gave me mixed impressions. In answer to a question asking about whether the material I brought up affected student’s attitudes, one student replied “No, not really. After class it kind of slipped my mind.” Some other students, however, seemed to have gained an appreciation for the effects that their own lives can have. One student answered the same question saying that “now I try to make less waste.”

It would have been vain for me to think that I could have made a difference in these students’ lives over the 3 class periods I spent with them. I feel that I was able to introduce a new prevalent issue, however; for most of the students, learning about the human population problem was new.

I enjoyed the time I spent at the Alternative Learning Center, and am thinking about different ways to teach about an important issue. This was my first real experience in an educational setting where I wasn’t the student. My experience helped me realize the true challenge of teaching while at the same time reaffirming my desire to continue on in the field of education.

Appendix A

The Human Population Problem

Questions for “Room to Live Past 6 Billion”

1) Explain the concept of “demographic momentum.”
2) What sort of problems will arise or have already risen as a result of over population?
3) Based on what you have read and what we discussed in class, what solutions do you think are plausible for slowing down and stabilizing the world population? Think particularly in terms of third world countries.

Appendix B

Thinking about the relationship between the food we eat and the land required to yield it.

Row 1: Percentage of land that is currently used to grow food. The rest of the land is either covered by forest, or is built upon by houses and other development.
Row 2: Increase in population over the next 50 years.
Row 3: Average amount of land available to yield food to feed each individual person in the country in the year 2000 (m²/year).
Row 4: Average amount of land available to yield food to feed individual person in the country in the year 2050 (m²/year).

* Remember, 5000 m²/year is an area the size of a football field.

Question

- Considering the alarming rate at which the population will grow in the next 50 years, particularly in Ethiopia, where will all the new people go? We don’t want to have to cut down any forest, however moving on to the land that is used to make our food will mean that there is even less land available, and less food available, to feed the growing population. Can you see any way of protecting the environment while making sure there is enough food to go around? To help you think about this question, what sort of foods require the most land to yield. What sort of food requires the least amount of land? What other problems can you foresee arising because of the food shortages?

Appendix C

Final Facts about Human Overpopulation

-From World Overpopulation Awareness (www.overpopulation.org)

-World Population reached:

• 1 billion in 1804
• 2 billion in 1927 (123 years later)
• 3 billion in 1960 (33 years later)
• 4 billion in 1974 (13 years later)
• 5 billion in 1987 (12 years later)
• 6 billion in 1999 (12 years later)

- The population is projected to reach 8.9 billion by 2050

- The world population growth rate is equivalent to about 3 babies a second.

- The world is adding the population of Los Angeles every two weeks.

- One tenth of all the people who have ever lived are alive today

- 1/3 of the population growth in the world is the result of incidental or unwanted pregnancies

- Ninety-seven percent of world population growth is taking place in less developed regions

- There are 2 billion people alive under the age of 20 in less developed regions.

- The life expectancy in Africa is currently seven years less than it would have been without AIDS

- Every 20 minutes an entire species of plant or animal becomes extinct- that is equal to about 27,000 species becoming extinct each year.

- Only 17% of the world’s population lives in industrialized countries.

- The richest 20 percent of humanity consume 86 percent of all goods and services, while the poorest 20 percent consume just 1.3 percent.

Appendix D

Evaluation

1. Did these class periods help you understand the problems associated with human overpopulation. Did you come out of the class with more knowledge than you came in with? What did you learn?
2. What was the most surprising think you learned?
3. What part of the class periods did you find most enjoyable?
4. What part of the class periods did you find most boring?
5. Did what you learned about overpopulation and also the effects of the American lifestyle on the earth affect your attitude about your own actions in any way? If so, how? If not, why not?

Thanks for your time, and the opportunity to let me come and share what I’ve learned with you. Good luck with the rest of the school year and any future endeavors.

References

• Cunningham, W.P. and Saigo, B.W. 1999. Environmental Science: A Global Concern, 5th Ed., McGraw Hill, Boston.
• World Overpopulation Awareness
• Year of Six Billion
• Zero Population Growth