Energy Education comes to Toledo schools

Toledo teachers will be trained at UT to teach their students renewable energy.

A new program called Sustainable Energy Education will soon be taught inside Toledo classrooms. The goal is to prepare students for Toledo's developing economy.

This is how the program will work. Toledo teachers will be trained at UT so they can teach their students about renewable energy. The hope is that students will be able to help the local economy down the road. Biofuel, wind, and solar will be the foundation of the new curriculum that will be taught in Toledo public and Toledo catholic schools thanks to a $5 million federal grant.

Dr. Charlene Czerniack wrote the grant that will fund the new program called Leaders. Twelve Toledo teachers will take 36 hours of cutting edge science courses at UT and take what they learn into classrooms. K-12th graders will then take the courses. "High school students can learn things like energy transfer, pollution, and ecology, and eco systems, and things like that. And kindergarteners can learn basic concepts. If you take for an example a simple pinwheel; where they can have it spin around, see how the wind blows the pinwheel around and how that's energy," says Dr. Czerniak.

The new program won't need much of an introduction at the Toledo Technology Academy. Students have been experimenting with wind and solar and biofuels for a few years now. Students have been building go-carts, some run on E-80.

With cutting edge curriculum, these students know they have an edge. But instead of being competitive, these students want to share what they've learned. "I think it's a good opportunity for kids to start learning from kindergarten all the way up to 12th grade. That's where the city, this country, is heading with sustainable energy. So I think it's a good opportunity for them to learn that," says Ariana Newton, a Toledo Technology Academy senior.

The new curriculum will be introduced in the classrooms in 2 years.

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