Feeding a Village with the Power of the Sun
The Fairmount Elementary School village, in El Cerrito, California, consisted of 270 students, 15 teachers, 10 parent volunteers and 7 special guests…and they still had food left over. It was this kind of abundance and community participation that transformed “To Feed a Village” from a school project into a community happening, one that the students and parents have continued to talk about well into the summer.
When asked why the Asian-style rice her class made inside a solar cooker turned out so well, Kindergarten Teacher Doris Reeves pointed up to the sky and said, “Because it was made by God.”
This statement highlights the great enthusiasm with which the teachers and students of Fairmont Elementary embraced the “To Feed a Village Solar Cookout.” All agreed that it was a rousing success. The children were filled with pride and excitement, and teachers are already looking at ways to incorporate solar cooking into their curriculum for next year using the supplies and knowledge provided by our Bright Ideas grant. This project was funded by the PG&E Solar Schools Program Bright Ideas grant.
The designers of this project (School Site Council Chairman Reyel Daystar, Michaela Daystar, and teachers Daneen Cali and Patricia Colbern) envisioned the potential of this project, but the event exceeded their expectations. It has heightened classroom discussion about, and galvanized our community around, renewable energy. This was the first time in the schools history (the first Fairmont Elementary Schoolhouse was built in 1897 when the city was called Rust) that the community united around the cause of conserving energy and teaching sustainable development.
Goals at the start of this project were twofold: 1. Introduce renewable energy science education into each classroom at Fairmont in a way that was fun and engaging for the children. 2. Bring official City and media attention to Fairmont, a school serving many low-income children that has a rich history and rising test scores, and yet has faced the possibility of closure by the School Board twice in the last three years.
The success of the first goal could be seen in the excitement the students had for the project—from the introduction assembly, through their classroom cooking experiments, and during the final event. Seven out of the eleven teachers who returned project evaluations cited the positive science learning and the hands-on learning techniques as the most positive aspect of this project; and four listed the participant enthusiasm. Each teacher was invited to incorporate the solar cooking experiments into their curriculum in whatever way they felt was best. Some had time for only the most basic experiments, while others used the project as a springboard into discussions about the environment, resource conservation, fossil fuels, the earth’s rotation, and even some of the social benefits of using clean energy sources. Some classrooms designed and built their own solar cookers, as did a pair of industrious fourth grade students who did it on their own.
During the two week span of the project, each classroom made a journal to chronicle their attempts at cooking. The students added colorful drawings of the cooking along with their commentary. These journals speak volumes about the pride and enthusiasm with which the students embraced the experiments, and also to their lessons learned.
The designers of the project acted as facilitators, and learned that along with excitements comes distraction. At least one teacher mentioned that during the week of classroom experiments, there was a lot of time during which the cookers were outside cooking and the students wished to keep an eye on them, which disrupted other lessons. This is a reflection of the experimental nature of this project as a first attempt to introduce renewable energy science into the activities of the school. Several of the teachers have begun to brainstorm ways to further integrate the new equipment and lessons into the regular curriculum of the school. The Fairmount Elementary team feels confident that as the teachers and students become more familiar with the process, such disruptions will be minimized.
The weather was the other major difficulty the teachers mentioned. While the sun is predictable, it’s not wholly dependable to do exactly what one wants at any given time during the day… One of the teachers pointed out that in El Cerrito’s microclimate the weather was uncooperative. This project was undertaken around the middle of the year in 2006. During the first few days of cooking practice the sky was overcast, preventing successful cooking. The students persisted and by the second week of practice the weather changed, bringing sunshine and solar cooking success. Perhaps the student’s persistence and enthusiasm coaxed the sun out of cloud seclusion. On the day of the cookout, there was not a cloud in the sky. Some of the journals mention the student’s disappointments about the weather, but also reflected the student’s new awareness of the weather as a force in our lives, and of our specific weather patterns.
As a secondary benefit, the solar ovens and water pasteurizers have been included in each classrooms emergency preparedness kits, adding safety education to the learning experience.
This project also fulfilled the team’s second goal, which was to promote Fairmont as an innovator in energy education. Many teachers and parents mentioned the press coverage we that got from the West County Times. One parent volunteer sent out a wonderful press release, and invited many people from local government and organizations. Our guests included: West Contra Costa School Board member Karen Pfeifer; Richmond City Council member and Mayoral candidate Gail McLaughlin; David Marin of the El Cerrito Green Party; Eric Bloom of the Richmond Annex Group; Barry Scott from the NEED project; Karalee Browne from PG&E; Alyssa Newman from the Foundation for Environmental Education; community activists/social workers Khaleedah and Ansar Muhammad; and Julius Davis, a volunteer from Solar Cookers International and the Great Uncle of one of our facilitators.
The success of this project was marked for Michaela, one of the project designers, when a fourth grade student showed her the shoebox cooker he and his friends made for the event. Michaela displayed their cooker along side all the others. The pride and respect they felt when they served their friends food out of their creation was exactly the kind of empowerment this project was designed to instill in our students.
[1] Listed in the Bay Area Green Business Directory, a publication coordinated by the Association of Bay Area Governments