Final Report
Essay Contest for High School Juniors and Seniors in New York State:
Are There Limits to Growth? Population, Consumption and the Environment
Atlantic Chapter, Population Committee
The Population Committee of the Atlantic Chapter received word of acceptance of its grant
proposal in March, 2012. As this was headed toward the end of the school year, it was too late
to try to implement this grant in the 2011-2012 school year, so we chose to begin gearing up to
do it in the late spring and the summer and launch the contest in September. We set the
deadline for April 1, 2013 for essays to be submitted and the announcement of the winners was
to be April 30, 2013, allowing a month for judges to read essays.
Winter and Spring, 2013 – A new Sierra Club volunteer, Margaret Perkins, found out about the
contest and volunteered to do more outreach to schools in New York City. Kathy continued to
do more outreach to schools in other parts of the state and in New York City, too. Ultimately,
we reached out to hundreds of high school teachers, through e-mails or snail-mails – mostly to
Environmental Science teachers, but some schools do not offer Environmental Science, so then
we mailed to Chairs of the Science Department or Earth Science teachers. We ultimately were
invited into 12 classrooms. When last reported, we had been in 8. The additional classrooms
were in LaGuardia High School in New York City (3 classes of 2 teachers) and Scarsdale High
School in Westchester County. So, if we were to estimate 25 students per class, that would
mean we personally spoke to about 300 students. Other teachers responded to Kathy, but
couldn’t find appropriate days to allow us to come in. Junior and Senior year for these students
is extremely challenging as they have many tests they need to take, so the curriculum is very
tight.
Ultimately, going into the classrooms turned out to be good, because it was the only
opportunity to reach some of these students. With the exception of one student, all other
students who submitted essays came from schools where no Committee Member visited the
school – the teachers had found out about the contest through our outreach, but had followed
up with their students without inviting us into their classrooms.
April, 2013 – The contest deadline was April 1. We received most of the essays the week or 2
before the deadline. The week before the deadline was a vacation week for students in many
of the schools and we did send e-mails around to many of the teachers reminding them to
remind their students of the contest. In the end, we received 22 essays from 8 high schools and
one from a student who was being home schooled. We had a total of 7 judges. Five of the
judges judged essays and narrowed them down to their best 4 or 5 choices, then 2 additional
judges made the final selection of the top 4. The judges were all members of the Population
and Consumption Committee except for one, who was a Sierra Club member with a
professional background in education, but who had never been involved in the Population Issue
before, but expressed some interest. Ultimately, 2 first place winners were chosen, then a
second or third place winner. The 2 first place winners chose to concentrate on different
aspects of the issues of Population and Consumption (one more on population and the other on
the consumption of one of the most important needs of humankind – water – so the 2 essays
complemented each other well.) By the end of April we mailed Certificates of Honorable
Mention and thank you letters to all those students who submitted essays but didn’t win.
First Week in May, 2013 – Several of us went into the winning schools to award the winners
their certificates. The 2 first-place winners were Jeb Polstein from Hastings High School and Liz
Nunez from LaGuardia High School. The second and third place winners were also both from
Hastings High School – Emma Solomon and Dayna Wilmot, respectively. We later mailed them
checks for being the winners and arranged membership into the Sierra Club for all 4.
Kathy drafted a press release and sent it to several local newspapers. We don’t think they
published anything (since we are not in those neighborhoods, we were not sure), although the
2 school newspapers did. The press release and the 2 winning essays were also sent to
Population Media Center, an organization that sends daily e-mails to people involved in the
population issue which most often include published articles on relevant topics. They posted
the press release and both first place winning essays. The Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter has
posted the press release and the 2 winning essays on its website.
Early June, 2013 – We brought together the 4 winners of the contest in a park in Hastings, NY
to film them for a short video. A videographer was obtained through one of the committee
members, questions were drafted and shared with the students beforehand. We filmed them
answering the questions and, in the process, we got to know the winners and they got to know
us and each other. The videographer completed a first draft of the video within one week.
Then various committee members viewed the first draft and offered suggestions to improve it.
A final version was available in early July.
Successes –
 Through school visits, we spoke to at least 300 students and encouraged them to think
about these issues
 We obviously reached many more than those 300 because most of the entries came
from students we didn’t actually meet because we were not invited into those schools.
It is impossible to know exactly how many students were exposed to some of the ideas
who didn’t bother to write an essay, but perhaps their teachers brought it up to them
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There was one school where 5 students from one classroom submitted essays. None of
them won the contest, but clearly that teacher had encouraged them to enter essays
All of the 100s of teachers who were sent e-mails or letters about the contest had to
have given it a little thought (unless they just ignored or never opened their e-mails.)
Anyone who submitted an essay could have shared some thoughts about the topic with
classmates, friends, family, etc.
The winners of the essays state on the video how they have shared some of what they
learned with classmates, family members, etc.
Anyone who might have read any write-up of the contest might have given more
thought to the issue
Those who see it posted on the Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter website would give some
thought to it.
The winning students may post something on their own Facebook sites.
We have posted the video on YouTube.
The Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter posted the video on their website.
The Sierra Club Lower Hudson Group posted the video on their website
The Sierra Club Lower Hudson Group included an write-up of the contest in it’s
newsletter, including a link to the video
Anyone who is on the Population Media Center listserv had an opportunity to read the
essays.
We are also sharing copies of the video with the teachers of the winning students
We recruited one new volunteer; when she found out about the contest she became
very active and wants to continue being active on the committee. We found another
new Sierra Club member who became interested at the end of the process; she became
one of the judges and attended one of the award ceremonies and the filming of the
video, thereby meeting the winners and being inspired by them. Two other newer
volunteers on the committee, who are very far upstate, could be involved as judges, so
are now energized to do more.
Challenges Encountered –
 There are social and political developments that are making it even more difficult to
broach these topics than ever before, even when their importance is becoming more
and more urgent. Population and consumption have become even more contentious
issues than ever! This may very well have turned some teachers off in even mentioning
the contest to their students.
 The No Child Left Behind policy in the schools is making it more difficult than ever to get
into the schools, or to suggest the addition of any topic, as the curricula is always very
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full and schools are teaching to standardized tests and working on reaching test score
goals. Teachers may also have felt that their students had too many pressures to deal
with, so they didn’t even bring up the topic of the contest or the contest itself.
Some students probably felt their priorities needed to be studying for those tests,
applying to college, etc.
Since we are all Sierra Club volunteers, other personal and professional issues came up
for some who had originally expressed interest in working on the contest but ended up
not having the time or energy to do so.
Lessons Learned/Suggestions Offered –
We reached out to mostly schools that teach AP Environmental Science. Not all schools even
offer this, although I would guess that the number is growing. Population is part of the
curriculum for those classes. It appeared that there were more entries if a particular teacher
encouraged his/her students to submit. It is probably in the wealthier communities or the
better schools where they can afford to hire a teacher qualified to teach AP Environmental
Science.
Clearly, some teachers were more interested in emphasizing the topic than others. In Hastings
High School, the teacher assigned the essay to all of her AP Environmental Science students to
write, and 4 of them submitted essays, 3 of which turned out to be winning essays. Hastings
school district, in Westchester County, is known to be one of the best in the county (and
probably way beyond.) The teacher seems to be exceptional and her students have won
awards for other activities. The teacher of the other winner of the contest didn’t assign his
students the essay, but he did offer extra credit to those who submitted essays. This teacher is
apparently new to teaching Environmental Science, but he has a mentor in the school who has
won awards as well.
We did not reach out to Social Studies teachers. This might have been a good idea, as the topic
is certainly multi-disciplinary with many, many social implications.
We reached out to the Science Teachers Association of NY State. They never responded to our
inquiry. It is unclear why. It seemed to be a good idea to reach other teachers in other schools.
In our outreach, particularly in the winter, we chose to concentrate on schools nearer to where
we were in the state the area in and around NY City, being leery of doing a lot of driving, if we
had been invited to schools far upstate, where we would have been more likely to be driving in
the snow.
Budgeting Changes - Since we ended up not going into too many schools, our transportation
budget was significantly lower than in the original grant application. So we were able to shift
that money. We were able to pay $500 to 2 first-place winners of the contest. And then, with
the remaining money, we hired a videographer who filmed and edited the video, which will
allow more people to find out about the issue, and portrays these 4 winners as the intelligent,
thoughtful, exceptional young people that they are. Hopefully, they will use their copies of the
video to spread the word, as we can as well. I have proposed to the Lower Hudson Group of
the Sierra Club that we design an educational meeting, open to the community, showing the
video, inviting one of the winners and perhaps the teacher to attend to open up a discussion
about the topics presented. (Three of the winners were high school seniors and are going away
to college in the fall, only one will still be in the area; she will be a senior in Hastings High School
in the fall.)