Teacher Education

At the core of the Sun Power for Schools program are the teachers using PV installations and performance data in their daily lesson plans. Since the inception of the program, teachers and administrators were eager for PV to come to their schools. The myriad of renewable energy and sustainability topics can be made real for students and cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries. Nonetheless, a common sentiment prior to the installations was uncertainty. Teachers did not know what to expect from the PV or the DAS and were hesitant to speculate how they would actually make use of the tool. Thus in order to capitalize on the solar installation as an interactive teaching aid, Green Power EMC first needed to harness teacher enthusiasm for solar in the general sense and get them excited about how they could use PV specifically in their own classroom.

With funding from the Million Solar Roofs Initiative, Southface and Green Power EMC offered a one-day teacher training. Due to short notice and distance - one challenge in a statewide program - Irwin High School was unable to send a representative. However, several local cooperatives were present as were teachers from across the sciences, including chemistry, physical sciences, earth sciences and environmental studies. During the training, teachers and co-op representatives were given an overview of the program, their solar electric systems and the types of data available to them.

Additionally, attendees were provided with an assortment of lesson plans and discussion topics, as well as PV, general solar and renewable energy resources already being utilized in other schools with established PV curricula. Much of this was obtained from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC). NYSERDA and FSEC’s solar school programs already showcase the relevance of solar energy curricula in schools and have a wealth of ideas easily transferred to the Sun Power for Schools pilot.

Due to new and pending changes to Georgia Performance Standards there was no way to completely align Green Power EMC’s initiative to the new standards until issuance of the test. Sensitive to the reality that teachers must meet State and National educational standards, the first training was designed to be a sparkplug—getting teachers to link Sun Power for Schools to the topics and issues they already address—rather than a proscriptive course of action. There were some concerns that the veritable solar sampler provided at the training could make it harder for solar energy concepts to be incorporated in the classroom; but at the training it became apparent that many teachers did not necessarily need or desire complete lesson plans as much as they needed the confidence to trust their own creativity.

Phase two of the Sun Power for Schools program will include middle schools as well as high school participants. From our experience with the first group of teachers and administrators, schools considered the PV array an educational investment for the entire district. Several schools had already discussed plans to hold district wide trainings for teachers of all grade levels. One teacher intends to assign students a project preparing and presenting a solar unit to younger grades in their district.

The principal issue impairing the success of the teacher training was timing. Project delays prevented Southface and Green Power EMC from providing the training until well into the school year. As a result, it was too late for many themes to be addressed and teachers worried that they would not be able to make use of the installation until the following year. Another consequence of scheduling was that a computer lab could not be secured for the training, preventing teachers from engaging with the DAS fully.

Moreover, Southface found that the abundance of solar energy related lesson plans was simply not salient under the existing scope and budget of the Sun Power for Schools program. Many lesson plans rely on the use of mini PV systems for individual students or groups of students to bring solar into their classroom. Although these tools are a wonderful addition to any classroom, the heavy reliance on these kits in many solar school programs could mask the benefits of investing in larger demonstration systems.