NEED & Power Supplier Educate Educators

In June, the sixth annual Tri-State Energy Conference brought together 45 educators teaching grades 4-12, and who are electric cooperative members or teach at schools that are within Tri-State’s member cooperatives’ service areas. Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association is the power supplier for 18 of Colorado’s 22 electric co-ops and 21 other electric co-ops in Wyoming, Nebraska and New Mexico.

The program, hosted at Tri-State’s headquarters in Westminster, CO, was offered in partnership with the National Energy Education Development Project. NEED works to promote an energy conscious and educated society through multi-sided energy education programs. Tri-State and NEED have partnered since 2012.

The three-day conference hosted applicants from Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico and Wyoming, and provided the educators with cutting-edge industry information regarding the science of energy, sources of energy, transportation, consumption, electricity, efficiency and environmental and economic impacts.

Participants worked their way through six innovative, hands-on stations that each represented a different lesson, with the goal to learn how to teach energy in the classroom or during after school programs. “The curriculum is designed to integrate energy and STEM into the classroom,” explained Michelle Pastor, Tri-State’s education program advisor.

Each teacher received professional development credits and the participants walked away with a Science of Energy kit to use in their classrooms which “Includes hands-on activities for kids to do that all relate to energy education,” Pastor said.

Teachers reported that they learned about the conference via social media and Colorado Country Life magazine, the statewide trade publication of the Colorado Rural Electric Association.