The Oklahoma Chapter of Sierra Club has received a $125 thousand grant from the Kirkpatrick Foundation to develop a renewable energy curriculum for Oklahoma teachers who teach 4th through 8th grade. This grant is the largest ever received by Oklahoma Sierra Club.
The growth in renewable energy investments over the last ten years in Oklahoma, especially in the wind industry with $13.7 billion in invested capital and has created over 8000 clean energy jobs. Renewable energy companies and community colleges across the state are creating job training programs for wind energy technicians and rooftop solar installers.
This grant will expand awareness of Oklahoma’s newest energy fields into secondary classrooms, where students will learn about the science and engineering behind this rapidly growing sector of the Oklahoma economy.
The free one day professional development workshops developed with this grant will provide curriculum written to standards, all needed supplies and hands on exploratory lessons surrounding how solar and wind energy are created.
The program will host 6 workshops across the state in 2018 and early 2019, and the trainings will be facilitated by retired science teachers Tara Barker and Jane Cronin, as well as Environmental Science professor Doug Weirick from East Central University.