For these Duluth teens, a diploma, solar panels and life lessons learned
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In every corner of Minnesota, there are good stories waiting to be told of places that make our state great and people who in Walt Whitman’s words “contribute a verse” each day. That's the theme of our series “Wander & Wonder: Exploring Minnesota’s unexpected places.”
When twin sisters Mauren and Zoe Pierson and their friend Kate Yapel walked across the stage last week in Duluth to receive their high school diplomas, they were celebrating much more than a graduation.
They were also marking the end of a journey they began as pint-sized sixth graders, when they first began pushing the Duluth school district to install solar panels on the roof of their school.
To them, it seemed like a no-brainer, an easy-to-fulfill request that made sense for the planet and the school. That’s when they learned their first hard lesson: Getting adults to listen to reason isn’t easy.
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“I think we’d be lying if we say we were never frustrated during it. We were very frustrated and kind of just overwhelmed at times,” Yapel acknowledged.
But they didn’t stop, and in the past seven years of battles, the students forged lasting bonds and learned lessons in grit and perseverance that classroom lessons rarely teach.
“Emailing people, reaching out to people, contacting news organizations, contacting professionals,” said Zoe Pierson. “School has taught me a lot, but all those things you can’t learn in school, I learned from working on this. And I’m so thankful.”
‘No way we’re gonna do this’
The journey began in Tanya Jackson’s sixth grade science class at Ordean East Middle School when “they learned about this big, scary thing called climate change,” Mauren Pierson recalled. “And it got us really nervous.”
So they formed an after-school climate club, where they decided to go big, to “try to make actual change,” said Zoe. They hatched a plan to put solar panels on the school roof. They gathered reams of research and pulled together a presentation, which they delivered to school district officials in their science classroom.
“It felt really scary,” said Zoe. “We’d been prepping for this meeting for months, so it felt very big,” said Mauren. “I remember my voice shaking and my hands shaking while I was up there,” recalled Zoe.
District leaders, though, told the kids it was too expensive and not feasible.
“It felt very much like they were saying, ‘Oh, you’re really cute. This is cool that you worked on this presentation, but there’s no way we’re gonna do this,’” remembered Zoe.
They spoke a few times at school board meetings, but the proposal died. Then COVID-19 hit, and the climate club's membership dwindled.
Yapel, though, kept at it. She and other students lobbied state lawmakers to create a Solar for Schools grant program. She went back before the Duluth School Board in ninth grade to urge the district to apply, explaining that solar panels would reduce the district’s carbon footprint, and save money in the long run. Again, the idea was dismissed.
“It just seemed like they didn’t want to work on it,” said Mauren. “Like, leave it to the adults to work on these kinds of things,” said Zoe.
Officials, though, did take notice of the kids and their effort.
While the pandemic made it all but impossible for the district to consider the idea, “I was really impressed with just their passion and their drive and their wanting to do good, no matter what,” recalled John Magas, the Duluth schools superintendent. “Their perseverance was, and has been, impressive. And I just appreciate their tenacity as well as their political acumen.”
The students were deflated, but they didn’t give up. They restarted the climate club in high school. This time nearly 40 students joined. They conducted more research. And they connected with organizations and experts around the state.
They began to realize that their youth, which they felt was sometimes used against them, also had its advantages. They also found that their voices carried a lot of weight.
A word with ‘my sixth-grade self’
The students made one final push last year, which culminated in a November school board meeting. A petition, along with posters strategically but “illegally” placed in bathroom stalls, helped bring 100 people to the board room, all wearing blue.
“This was really a turning point,” Zoe said as she showed off a photo of the meeting.
Then in January, seven years after they first started working on it, the students learned the district had been approved for a grant to help pay for a solar array to be placed on the roof of the district’s new service center.
Zoe was in choir when she heard the news.
“And then all of a sudden I hear my name being called from down the hallway. So I go into the hall and I see Mauren and Kate and Amelia all running towards me crying.”
“I think persistence has been an incredible lesson,” said Amelia Gilbert, another member of the climate club who helped deliver the news to Zoe.
“What got us across the finish line is we did a lot of work,” said Kate. “Every time it kind of was like, here’s the problem, then we’d go back to the drawing board. Let’s figure out a solution.”
Kate said she wished she could go back in time to reassure her younger self. “I really wish I could tell my sixth-grade self, like, you’re awesome for trying. Because for myself, at least, it was really easy to see no progress as not doing good enough.”
Magas, the superintendent, remains impressed by the students’ perseverance.
“It really edified my sense of faith in our current generation moving forward,” he said. “It’s not just about being on TikTok on your cell phone. It’s about really making a difference in the world. And these students have definitely done so.”
Now 18 and 19 years old, the women have plans this summer to climb to the roof of the school district service center to see the solar panels installed, seven years after they first asked for them.
And in the fall, Mauren, Zoe and Kate will reunite at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities where they plan to study environmental science.
