Hamilton International Middle School

Hamilton International School in Seattle, Washington has a unique history with the Solar 4R Schools program. While initially the recipient of a Renewable Classroom project, thanks to the support of the Walmart Foundation and The Foundation for Environmental Education, the school upgraded their commitment to renewable energy education in 2012 as a Renewable School.

As a Renewable School, Hamilton is building a dedicated community of renewable energy educators, generating clean energy through their 5-kilowatt on-site photovoltaic (PV) system (installed in 2012) and leveraging the system's performance data as an educational tool to bring energy topics to life in their classrooms. At the time of the project, data monitoring provided to the school has connected the live performance data from their PV system for educational purposes. Educators within the school received a customized renewable energy teacher training, hands-on science kit materials to augment the school's existing curricula and complete access to the resources available on the Solar4RSchools.org website. To optimize integration of renewable energy science and technology content, every aspect of the support provided by Solar 4R Schools was customized to fit the unique focus of the school community, including topics covered in the teacher training as well as our recommendations for activities and science kit materials to make integration of this new content as efficient as possible.