Marina Penalver

Impact Narrative

Marina’s proposal for OVER:

“I will share books with my fellow teachers, and with my students. Since our students also have families, they will share the ideas with their parents and friends. Our student work is also shared nationally with other schools in our Expeditionary Learning network. Knowledge is viral.

I teach 8th grade science at King Middle School in Portland, Maine. Our school is an Expeditionary Learning school, which means that we engage all content areas while studying along a real-life theme such as civil rights or energy use. In my particular “house”, all student projects ultimately make it to a public audience in a display of student understanding of and responses to guiding questions . I propose to use the free copies of Overdevelopment, Overpopulation, Overshoot as a book club book for discussion and debate. Our students incorporate what they learn to create a political message in the form of artwork for public display, in the case of our Four Freedoms project. For our Energy Expedition of Learning, students’ research and classwork culminates in the creation of Public Service Announcements on the Sustainability topics of their choice. Source citations would be part of any project, and your book would be cited, if we had it available. We always document student progress in photographs and videos, as well as in samples of their work, which we share with other teachers not only in the school but within our network of EL schools. Our resource lists are also shared.

Very often overpopulation is an ignored issue in our classes’ studies. We discuss the science of global warming, water scarcity, drought, fossil fuels, and even overconsumption, but there is a conspicuous absence of the word “overpopulation.” I would love the chance to include this concept into our students’ global awareness and understanding of the challenges facing humans today. The images in your book are unforgettable.”