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More than enough energy with FSS students
By Mary Giuliano
There are some great teachers in our schools and one of those is Grade 9 class teacher Roxane Esch of Fernie Secondary School.
Part of the class course includes inviting City of Fernie council members for the annual presentation of Energy systems where students pitch their power generation ideas to sell, contract or partner with the local government.
Split into four groups, each one chooses an energy production to research and then present. The students don’t know what question will be asked and responses are marked on a variety of indicators such as eye contact, strong reply, behaviour, knowledge, Power-point presentation content, and confidence displayed.
The grade nine students are impressive, quick to make up responses. Councillors Jon Levesque, Ange Qualizza and I were asked some tough questions to which answers sounded quite credible.
VIZ Energy with Dawson, Brendan and Simon spoke about purchase of the Elko Dam from BC Hydro and plans to produce energy to sell it back to Hydro.
N Kenergy was Isaac, Zoe and Nick with a presentation of Solar Energy. Their idea was to provide solar panels for individual homes. When asked if they had considered that the Elko Dam project would be huge competition they replied that they could handle that.
Totally Nucleur had Emma, Sam and Paige. Their idea was to turn waste to energy as it would reduce waste, provide energy and reduce the size of landfills.
Industria Inc. had Kate, Layne, Hailey and Jaime talking about reducing emissions, removing metals and minerals and producing energy that would be positive in every way.
Environmentally friendly, ecology, reducing financial impact on families, were some of the phrases heard from each group who also presented letters from different government approval agencies for their projects. One also had cards made up with name of their company; all had reached out to companies like Kimberley’s SunMine to learn actual information on their project.
The importance of this project is not so much the information because with today’s technology information is available immediately, what is key is the student’s ability to take that information and deliver it in a self-confident way.
Dress, posture, eye contact, strong voice is what has to be projected, when these young teens are ready to score their dream job what they have learned in this class will help them greatly. Congratulations Mrs. Esch and students. Well done.
– Mary Giuliano is Mayor of the City of Fernie.
