“You can’t change the world, but you change your little corner of the world,” AP science teacher Stan Bergkamp tells his students. “If enough people do that then it becomes something powerful.”

A former Peace Corps volunteer in Botswana, Bergkamp teaches AP Physics and AP Chemistry in Maize, KS with energy, enthusiasm and hope. The initiative he started to bring solar power to Maize is now saving the school district $55,000 a year which is a teacher’s annual salary.

The journey started when he saw savings after installing his own solar panels. In 2018, he started the Maize Solar Foundation, and in a year and a half, the campaign raised $135,000 which was enough money to fund a $400,000 ground-mounted solar array at the Maize schools.

“The kids have taken tremendous ownership in this,” Bergkamp said. They message him when they drive by the array and talk in their graduation speeches about making a difference in their corner of the world. “It’s much more powerful than just a set of solar panels out in the field.”

On the day before Thanksgiving, a thank-you note came sliding under his classroom door. On the back, the student had drawn Bergkamp, the sun and a solar panel. “You need to get that tattooed,” his class urged.

Getting a tattoo would be a big leap for Bergkamp, a self-described “conservative,” but he made a deal with his students that he hoped he wouldn’t have to keep. If they could raise $3,000 for the Maize Solar Foundation, he’d get the tattoo.

“The downfall of teaching advanced science is that I teach really smart kids,” he said with a laugh. “Social media kicked in, and they ended up raising $3,800, and I had to get the tattoo. And it hurt a lot.”

From there, the kids decided to sell t-shirts that said, “We all have skin in the solar game.” The t-shirts raised another $1,000.

This first array was initially leased to the school so that a federal tax credit could be used to help finance the system. The Maize Solar Foundation’s second project, a roof-mounted solar array, was purchased by the school.

That second array came online on Jan. 6, 2023, but the school wasn’t initially able to claim the available 30 percent federal tax credit, due to regulatory wording regarding the school’s fiscal year. At a renewable energy summit in Washington, D.C. Bergkamp successfully lobbied to clarify language that allowed the school to claim the credit.

Bergkamp even donated the proceeds of his first children’s book, “Loopie, the Spirit of a Cow Dog,” to help fund the solar panels. The book is based on lessons learned from his late father Bob Bergkamp, who had to leave school after eighth grade but taught Stan “to leave the world a better place than you found it.”

In a video about the project, Stan Bergkamp walks away from the camera in between the rows of solar panels. People who knew Bob Bergkamp swear the footage is of Stan’s father. “It’s been a pretty amazing journey,” Stan said. “It’s been much more spiritual than I ever thought it would be.”

He recalled getting small donation checks from one family, in odd numbers down to the cent. The school counselor shared with him that the family was struggling financially. “That’s all they had left at the end of the month, but they wanted to contribute,” he said.

Bergkamp credited his “phenomenal kids” and a “great administration” at Maize that “took an absolute blind leap of faith” in approving the project.

Before he retires, Bergkamp wants to get one more solar array at Maize schools. “The third and final project that I really want to get done is to actually have solar panels directly above my room, so when I’m giving a lecture, I can say, those solar panels, right up here on top of this roof, are generating electricity that I can use to make toast,” he said.

Now, there’s a science lesson his students will never forget.