Solar One Educators developed CleanTech with the support of a steering committee and an advisory council representing folks from the green industry, and classroom teachers.
We primarily work with science teachers, but we have also worked with math, art, ELA, engineering teachers, and more! We always push for schools to make the program interdisciplinary. For example, in one activity students work on sizing a solar PV system for a school rooftop which works really well in a math class. Or, after students conduct an energy audit, they might work on an energy awareness campaign with their ELA or art teacher.
We provide professional development training for teachers, and we also deliver some of the hands on activities side-by-side with teachers in the classroom.
Most of our partner teachers participate in anywhere from 6-18 hours of training. Thanks again!

Thank you Gillian!We ran the pilot with 4 schools over the course of two years, and since that we have delivered a mix of professional development training (6-18 hours per teacher) and co-teaching workshops to reach teachers at over 160 schools. We are excited to continue to learn how teachers are using the curriculum after a co-teaching workshop or a professional development training program. Thanks!

Hey there,

We partner with the NYC Department of Education, and they have really supported us through helping to get the word out. In some cases we delivered 3 day workshops as part of a larger citywide STEM training event. We also host free PD training on the 2 citywide staff development days for teachers, and those have been well attended. We also have a monthly newsletter, and have presented at several conferences. I would say that our partnership with DOE has really been the most helpful in recruiting teachers. We have also worked to provide teachers with materials tool kits which helps as an incentive. Thanks!

Thank you! You brought up an excellent point. We actually did the reverse for this program- we started with a program called The Green Design Lab for 3rd-5th grade students and 6th-8th grade students. With support from NSF, we took the core ideas from our 3rd-8th curricular guides and used them to design our more advanced high school program- CleanTech!

Thank you Kelly! We are at the tail end of our pilot program and worked with an outside evaluator. We conducted surveys with our partner teachers, did a pre-post knowledge and attitude survey with students, and ran some student focus groups. We are hoping to be able to share the data from the evaluation soon!

Thank you Nancy! That was a major part of our design process. While partnering with our 4 partner schools for the pilot, we actually worked with science teachers, engineering teachers, architecture teachers, and electrical teachers. It was great to combine science and career and technical education!

Thank you Marian! For our food unit we explore topics including food systems, industrial agriculture, processed food and nutrition, population and food production, and soil science. Students conduct community food surveys, build DIY classroom hydroponic systems, and conduct carrying capacity labs to explore exponential growth. One of my favorite lessons focuses on the history of school food, it is so interesting to look back!