Teachers Todd Carpenter and Ash Crane took their classes to the outdoor basketball court to do their yearly Food for Thought activity on Sept. 11 and 12. This activity was created by the organization Earth Matters in an effort to provide students with a tangible way to see data instead of looking at plot points on a graph. 

“We have found this lesson to be very effective,” Crane said. “Both in providing those perspectives that help students conceptualize what we discuss in class, but also in building class rapport and providing a fun and engaging lesson at the beginning of the year for our students.” 

Students stand in different areas designated to represent continents. This year, the so-called continents are defined with lines of chalk, and the students represent the total population of those continents.

“I was put in Europe, and Asia looked packed with people,” freshman Taylor Andrews said.“It seemed very hot to be packed like that, especially with it being so hot outside.”

Students said that the project helped put what they’ve been learning into a physical means, helping them better understand how population relates to other aspects of the world such as land distribution and population growth. 

“The main thing we learned was how different the cultures were and how some areas had more money than others like the US had way more than all the other continents,” Andrews said. “It was helpful to get a visual demonstration of a lesson that we learned previously.” 

Both teachers found that engagement commonly started waning after a while, so they devised ways to pull back in student interest.

“Students tend to start doing things like getting on their phones and zoning out, however, we have found it makes a great analogy to discuss how higher population, lower resource areas also tend to have higher rates of crime,” Crane said. “That discussion being unscripted and lighthearted often tends to bring students back into the lesson.”