Rationale
This unit is designed with high school biology or high school environmental students in mind. My school is in a nearby suburb of San Francisco, yet we are physically and culturally isolated. Science education has never been a focus in the district. About half of the students are Caucasian with a balance of Asian, African American and Latino students. Economically, they range from families struggling financially to the lower end of middle class. There are many single parent families and many students raised by grandparents. Drugs and alcohol use are an underlying community issue.
Students in the United States are struggling with motivation, confidence and thinking skills, especially in the Sciences. I have chosen this focus topic with the intent that it will be engaging, relevant, and useful for future decision making at both the individual and civic levels. I desire to give my suburban, and thus isolated, teenage students something global and holistic to focus on. One of the more difficult challenges for any high school teacher is convincing students of the importance and applicability of science to their current and future world. Conveying this message to students is essential, since it is virtually impossible to teach them anything if they do not care or understand how the topic relates to them. By presenting them with topics that are timely and relevant to their own lives I hope they will have the motivation to sustain a curiosity for the subject material. As they can see evidence of plastic products almost everywhere they look, students might perceive the topic as relevant. Students are very interested about educating themselves about topics relevant to them, sharing their knowledge through various means and becoming motivated to improve conditions. My high school students have concerns over the environment and they wish to make a positive impact. In this unit, the focus is on chemistry and the environment.
As the third largest industry in the United States after automotive and steel, plastics seem to be invading every single aspect of our modern lives. According to the American Chemistry Council the average American consumes three hundred pounds of plastic a year. Their uses are not always obvious or visible to the general public. For example, hundreds of thousands of hectares (10,000 square meters) of plastics are used in agriculture every year (a hectare is about the same size as football field). Many plastics are used in health care, i.e. intravenous bags. Innumerable plastic water bottles are used daily. I think we should be conscious of this phenomenon for the impact of plastics will continue to drastically impact our lives and the state of the environment.
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