Do you remember when fuel prices were so low that filling up your gas tank wasn't even a concern for you financially?
I teach middle school, grades 6-8 here in rural Wyoming and the largest industry in our community is the oil, natural gas and coal mining industries.
My students work with a lot of computers and pre-engineering type of projects, and have recently been asking if we will ever do a unit on alternative energy resources.
My Project
As said before, we live in a community surrounded by natural gas wells and coal mines, and the community has recently been hit pretty hard with the economy and the fact that many of our gas wells around us are not producing like they used to. This has led to large amounts of layoff and/or transfers, causing great concern for our education in town. We have recently been getting more alternative energy projects, such as large wind turbine fields, but the people in town and my students lack the knowledge about how they work and why. I am requesting alternative energy kits to use in class to help the students understand more about their need, and how important alternative energy will become in their future. And how it can have an impact on their lives today.
My middle school students come from a very blue collar, low income community where the major percentage of their families work in the natural gas and coal mining industry.
Recently we have had numerous wind turbines and other alternative energy projects constructed in and around our community. There has become a huge interest in this new type of energy and I want to open their minds and knowledge to this. The older generation has not been very receptive of these wind turbines because in my minds it challenges their livelihood, and the young generation does not know enough about them to understand how beneficial alternative energy will be for them. This would be a great chance to open some doors up for these students.
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As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mr. Fackrell and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.