Tomika Altman is an Advanced Learning Services Central-Based Instructor with the Wake County Public School System in North Carolina. Tomika first discovered PopEd at the National Council of Teacher of Mathematics conference nearly 16 years ago and has been a PopEd trainer ever since. She first started using PopEd lessons as Earth Day activities to enrich and extend the current curriculum, and continued using them because it was a great way to connect literacy, math, and science.

Tomika says, “My favorite lesson is Panther Hunt. Not only is it a bodily-kinesthetic lesson that keeps students up and moving, but it really drives home sustainability and understanding ecosystems and how one small thing can impact another.” A memorable moment from a past workshop is when she presented at the North Carolina Association of Gifted Children conference in March of 2025. Her school director attended her session and loved it so much that she wanted Tomika to present a PopEd session for the gifted teachers in her school district.

Dr. Rebekah Baker is an Associate Professor of Teacher Education at Anderson University in Indiana. She teaches social studies, math and STEM methods classes, as well as multicultural education. After first discovering PopEd at the IN state math conference, she has become a go-to facilitator in the Indianapolis area. Rebekah “enjoys sharing information with others in meaningful, engaging, and fun ways” and especially likes the lessons Who Polluted the Potomac? and Mining for Chocolate because of their hands-on nature and the ability to use simple materials to teach powerful lessons.

Jeff Firsching is a Social Studies Teacher at Lawton-Bronson Jr/Sr High, an Adjunct Instructor at Morningside University (Iowa), and has been a Population Education trainer since 2019. Since joining, he has annually conducted a PopEd workshop at the Iowa Council for the Social Studies Conference and semesterly for his own students at Morningside University.

Jeff uses Population Education lessons with his Morningside students to “give pre-service teachers a jump start on geography/social studies topics they can use in their future classrooms.” His two favorite lessons to facilitate are Mining for Chocolate and Panther Hunt, both soliciting “a great deal of enthusiasm” from his students. Jeff says “The [Mining for Chocolate] simulation really opens their eyes into how the environment is impacted by human activities. (The chocolate chip cookies after the simulation may also help with the enthusiasm). I get a lot of great feedback from my students when we present the Panther Hunt lesson. Students enjoy the movement offered by the lesson and they always have great discussions about how changes to one part of an ecosystem can impact the other parts.”

Kenneth Jones is a Lecturer and Master Teacher with UTeach Columbus at Columbus State University and became a PopEd trainer in 2011. He encourages the aspiring educators in his class to find confidence in making the material their own, a skill that shines through in his PopEd workshops.

Kenneth says, “I like the idea of educating people about population and environmental issues. We have a responsibility to be stewards of the Earth. A lot of times people aren’t aware of the impacts of population growth and what to do about it, and they aren’t aware of the larger global perspective.” He particularly likes lessons that are interdisciplinary, and his favorites include Mining for Chocolate, Timber, Something for Everyone, and Panther Hunt. Kenneth enjoys presenting for both pre-service classes and at conferences. He especially finds value in presenting to large audiences where he can adapt to the challenge of a large group, facilitate great discussion, and see educators get excited to use PopEd materials in their classrooms.

Robin Koerber is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at Missouri State University, where she also coordinates the Internship Academy that places education students in year-long teaching internships. Robin is a former kindergarten teacher. She’s been in the PopEd Trainers’ Network since 2017 and has facilitated nearly 30 workshops since then.

Robin’s favorite activity to share in workshops is Who Polluted the River? She says, “It’s not easy to choose but I always enjoy facilitating the Who Polluted the River lesson. It clearly demonstrates how everyone shares in being a part of the problem, but we can also consciously work to be a part of the solution by taking care of our waterways.”

Marni is an Adjunct Professor at Grand Canyon University and the Sr. Director of K12 STEM Outreach at Grand Canyon Education in Arizona. She joined the PopEd Trainers Network in 2022. Since then, she’s presented nearly two dozen workshops and shared PopEd resources with almost 500 educators. She’s a regular attendee at PopEd’s online teacher training workshops and has helped with curriculum updates as well.

Marni was first introduced to PopEd at a conference many years ago. After using PopEd with her students she noted that, “students were engaged during the lessons, participated in thoughtful discussions after each activity, and easily met the learning objectives of each lesson.” Her favorite lessons include Population Circle, which she refers to as a scaffold throughout her presentations, and Timber!, which she likes for its physical connection of consumption, renewable resources, and math.

Dr. Judy Maima Skeele is a Professor of Child Development & Education at San Jacinto College in Houston, TX, as well as the President of TERJA, a non-profit that creates learning and growth opportunities for marginalized youth worldwide. Through TERJA’s signature program, students in the U.S. and Kenya (Judy’s home country) partner to tell digital stories about themselves and their communities.

Judy’s interest in global citizenship had her inviting PopEd into her classroom in 2011, and in 2014, Judy joined the Trainer’s Network. She says, “It was clear to me that Population Education was making a significant impact on my students’ understanding of global issues.”

Eliezer Nieves-Rodriguez is a Geography Professor at the University of Puerto Rico and an Education Specialist at the San Juan Bay Estuary. He first came to PopEd after attending a session at the National Association for Interpretation (NAI) conference and in his words, “the rest was history.”

Eliezer quickly saw the relevance of PopEd lessons for his human geography pre-service courses. In fact, his most memorable PopEd experience has been seeing his students use PopEd materials in their own classrooms. He also enjoys sharing PopEd through the NGO he works for, Estuario de la Bahía de San Juan, where he trains educators on PopEd lessons that will help them teach about the relationship between people, water, watersheds and conservation. He shared that, “the activities facilitate constructivist teaching and help us educators and interpreters to inspire about important issues that occur in our cities, natural areas and communities.”

Steph Ruder is a science teacher at JI Case High School in Racine, WI. She attended a train-the-trainer Leadership Institute in 2019 and since then has reached nearly 150 area educators through both in-person and online teacher trainings.

Steph shared that her favorite lesson is Power of the Pyramids, which she uses to help her students understand how to analyze different types of graphs in preparation for the ACT exam. Her most memorable presenting experience to date was at the Wisconsin Society for Science Teachers conference where she had an unexpectedly large audience of 40 people! She has also enjoyed presenting at the National Science Teachers conference in Chicago.

Shirley Smith is a retired university professor with 46 years of experience in the field of education, including serving as an elementary, middle school, and gifted education teacher and a curriculum specialist. She has served as a PopEd trainer for 8 years and has facilitated over a dozen workshops. Shirley shared that being a trainer with PopEd, “enables me to keep in touch with former colleagues and give back to the profession. As a trainer, I especially enjoy working with pre-service teachers because they are so enthusiastic and appreciate receiving resources and lesson plans that are aligned with state standards. They give me hope in the future of our teaching profession!”

Her favorite PopEd lesson plan is Power of the Pyramids. Shirley appreciates that “ math students are able to display data in a new and interesting way, and the follow-up questions help students expand their global awareness.”

Dr. Scott Townsend is a professor of science education at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, KY. Since joining the network in 2010, Scott has presented over 60 workshops for pre-service educators at EKU as well as at conferences including the Kentucky Science Teachers Association and the Kentucky Association for Gifted Education.

Scott’s favorite PopEd lesson is Who Polluted the Potomac?, which he facilitates with his elementary science methods students each semester. Scott says: “I constantly receive emails or get tagged on social media of my former students (some from several years ago), now elementary teachers, doing the activity with their students. I recently had a student who did it with her 5th graders, and extended the lesson into an engineering activity in which the students had to create a water filter to clean the water from the tank. It obviously makes me very proud, as a science teacher educator, to see activities we did in my classroom being implemented in theirs.”

Julie Travaglini is the Senior Director of Education and Curriculum for Allegheny Land Trust. Her favorite PopEd lessons are Carbon Crunch and Crowding Can Be Seedy. For Crowing Can Be Seedy, she has her own twist: “I like to add in a piece about invasive species and plant a “bad” seed in the pot. The bad seed is an invasive species and when they grow, they open an umbrella which shades out the other seedlings. It’s a great way to introduce invasives and their traits/effects. We also swap out the seed growing portion for growing seeds hydroponically in pool noodles at our summer camps!” One of Julie’s favorite things about facilitating PopEd workshops is getting to connect with workshop participants at conferences.

Anthony Zanin is the Assistant Principal of Farley MS and a former high school teacher. He first discovered PopEd through the lesson Demographically Divided World. “When I started teaching AP Human Geography, multiple teachers directed me to the Earth Matters curriculum.”

Each summer, Anthony he shares resources with hundreds of APHG teachers at Advanced Placement Summer Institutes. The high school geography lesson Tale of Three Megacities is his current favorite. “This lesson meets everything that I try to include in a lesson from working with documents and different sources, while also providing purposeful group conversations and peer collaboration. This lesson is also a fan-favorite amongst my students.”