Summer Institute

Energy and Climate Projects Academy
teachers work with equipment, view of Lake Morey dock with boats

We plan to offer the program in Summer 2021. More information and dates to come.

Energy and Climate Projects Academy is a week-long dive for K-12 teachers into

  • hands-on investigations
  • best instructional practices
  • student-driven action

Spend a week at beautiful Lake Morey and dive deeply into climate and energy systems through investigations, project-based learning, academically productive discussion, and action. This institute will help you add student-centered projects to your teaching toolkit as you develop your curriculum and instructional practices. Grow strategies that build student agency, grounded in Next Generation Science Standards, Common Core math and literacy, C3 Framework, and 21st-century skills. You’ll leave with everything you need to guide students to make a difference in their school and community.

The institute and one follow-up meeting will support you to create a personalized teaching unit on energy and/or climate, using ambitious instructional practice. Individual ongoing support and use of VEEP/NHEEP materials kits will be available to help make your unit successful during the 2021/22 school year.

Tuition includes all instruction and materials, plus all meals and a spacious shared room at Lake Morey Resort. Three graduate credits are available. Scholarship funds are available if cost is a barrier; please be in touch if you would like more info on scholarships: info@veep.org.


The printable registration form can be found here. Please mail completed form to VEEP, 79 River Street, Suite 303 Montpelier, VT 05602 or sign up by filling out the webform below.

  • Report on the 2019 VEEP/NHEEP Summer Institute by NHEEP's Aubrey Nelson

    There was an audible buzz in the room during this year’s VEEP/NHEEP Summer Institute at Lake Morey Resort in August. As we dug into the many new activities and fun

    Summer Institute Participants work near the lake
    Caption

    hands-on materials, or ‘recharged’ by paddling around at the end of a long day of learning on the beautiful Lake Morey, I couldn’t help but notice a metaphor between the energy in the group and some of the electricity storylines we were exploring. Just as electrons move through the powerlines, questions, ideas and support were flowing amongst these educators. Although perhaps not true examples of  magnetostriction or coronal discharge phenomena, there was definitely enough excitement to cause the air around this group to hum. 

    Throughout the week, our fearless “System Operators,” Deanna Bailey and Laura MacLachlan, helped us to see how the three strands of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) were all connected: how practices and cross-cutting concepts can be interwoven with content to transform lessons so that the students make the switch from “learning about” to “figuring out.” Together we all practiced seeing the (often hidden) processes and systems that connect what might initially seem like disparate phenomena. For instance, we were able to discover that cats’ appreciation for lying in sunny windows might be able to tell us things about electromagnetic energy, and even earth’s climate. But rather than just trust our “System Operators” to tell us how things work, we conducted experiments to provide evidence of how they’re related. Other VEEP/NHEEP staff came “on-line” to contribute their expertise and supplies, but this was just a trickle of information when compared with the collective knowledge the teachers conveyed to each other throughout the week. By Friday, each intrepid educator had drawn on all of the activities, discussions and collaborations in order to produce powerful new units for their classrooms. One teacher is going to explore with her 7th grade life science class how transportation choices to and from school might be connected to the spread of ticks and Lyme disease. Another is tying erosion questions and weather patterns into discovering why the playground at their school keeps flooding. But this is just a small sampling.  There are so many more projects, with topics ranging from electricity to trout habitat to green roofs, and they all connect to energy and climate in age-appropriate ways.

    And, even more impressive, all of these educators will deliver more than content or practices. Their lessons are wired to do WORK! To empower kids to generate meaningful action and positive impacts in their communities. And this is where the electrical metaphor fails, because unlike the grid, which loses efficiency over time and distance, the work these fine folks did during the Summer Institute will be amplified. We’re so excited-- dare I say “energized”- by their commitments to spark new questions, investigations and actions. Thank you so much to all who participated, and please continue to check in and use VEEP/NHEEP as a resource for whatever you may need to support your efforts!