Our Energy Heroes educational program had an outstanding 2024-2025 school year. We reached more students than ever before while maintaining our commitment to equity and academic excellence.
Since 2008, Energy Heroes has brought hands-on learning about electrical safety, renewable energy, and conservation directly to classrooms across our service area. This year’s achievements show the program’s continued growth and effect on the young learners in our communities.
What made 2024-2025 exceptional
For the 2024-2025 school year, the Energy Heroes program delivered workshops for 190 classes — this amounts to 5,185 students at 47 different schools! These numbers represent a significant expansion for the program. In fact, more than a third of the workshops took place at schools that were new to the program or hadn’t participated in the past four years.
Key achievements include:
- Reached students across all four workshop levels for grades 1-12.
- Maintained strong geographic coverage across our entire service area.
- Participated in the YMCA Earth Service Corps Environmental Symposium for the third consecutive year.
Advancing equity in energy education
Energy Heroes continues to align with the City of Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative (RSJI) goals. We prioritized workshop delivery to schools serving historically under-resourced and marginalized communities.
Our equity efforts resulted in:
- 61 workshops (34%) delivered at priority schools with high percentages of students receiving free and reduced meals, students of color, and English language learners.
- Enhanced workshop materials to improve accessibility for multilingual students and those with limited English proficiency.
- Updated graphics, simplified instructions, and adjusted teaching approaches based on presenter observations and feedback.
What students learn through Energy Heroes
The Energy Heroes curriculum covers age-appropriate topics that connect to real-world sustainability challenges:
- Elementary school students explore electrical safety, local renewable energy systems, and practical conservation actions they can take at home.
- Secondary school students dive deeper into broader energy systems, including hydropower, regional power mixes, and environmental justice as it relates to Seattle’s transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
All workshops use interactive activities such as hands-on power mix exercises, energy generation demonstrations, conservation board games, and movement-based learning to encourage critical thinking and curiosity.
Teachers and students respond positively
We collected feedback from 70 teachers across all grade levels. The response was overwhelmingly positive, with teachers praising the program’s engaging content, clear delivery, and strong connection to classroom curriculum.
- “Everything was done wonderfully! Thank you for providing such skilled facilitators to teach our students, and for sharing this knowledge with us!”
- “The instructor had great management skills, and was able to deflect disruptive questions and behavior in an efficient yet respectful way, while also making sure every student was heard.”
- “It reinforced learning we had been doing in science and are now doing in social studies. The explanation of hydropower was excellent.”
Teachers particularly appreciated how the workshops addressed complex topics like dam impacts in developmentally appropriate ways while highlighting the benefits of renewable energy generation. This feedback is especially valuable as environmental topics continue to grow in importance in schools.
Looking ahead
The Energy Heroes program’s success demonstrates the strong demand for accessible, equity-focused energy education in our communities. By connecting students to their local utility and empowering them with practical knowledge, we’re helping develop the next generation of energy-conscious citizens.
The program’s expansion to new schools while maintaining quality delivery shows our commitment to reaching every student in our service area. We look forward to continuing this important work during the 2025-2026 school year.
Interested in bringing Energy Heroes to your school? If you’re interested in learning how to become energy heroes, consider reaching out. We’d love to hear from you.