Farmington teacher wins 'green' award

FARMINGTON — Greg Domgaard, a teacher at Farmington Junior High School, has won a $1,000 grant to implement environmental lessons in his classroom.

Domgaard, who teaches ninth-grade earth science, is one of 40 middle school educators in public schools across the nation to receive the grant from General Motors and Discovery Education.

The goal is to have imaginative lessons on renewable energy initiatives. Winners submitted essays explaining how they will advance their students' learning about sustaining resources.

Domgaard's students will use the school's weather station to monitor and track wind and sun during the school year to consider ways in which they might be utilized to generate electricity for the school.

"It's going to be a fun opportunity for the kids to do some real science," Domgaard said.

Once the students have collected, sorted and plotted the data from the weather station, they will build small-scale balsa wood models of a wind tower and research how real wind towers work. In addition, they will test a solar panel and determine how much solar energy reaches the school.

To showcase their work and create awareness of the program, students will create a green energy Web page to show off their data and link it to the school Web site.

For more information on the contest, go to livegreen.discoveryeducation.com/.