Students watch as Kemarkus Young stands on a ladder to flatten out reflective roofing on a tiny house under construction at Tyner Academy. In addition to a composting toilet and solar oven, the home will feature a thermal roof.
Jerry Webb 
Gage Swanson climbs a ladder to flatten out reflective roofing material on an environmentally friendly tiny house that students in Jerry Webb’s class have been constructing.Learning about renewable energy doesn’t involve listening to lectures and staring at textbooks for students at Tyner Academy.
Instead, they’re learning by doing – building an energy-efficient tiny house that will be powered by solar energy.
“A lot of people don’t know how much you can do with the sun,” said Tynia Palmer, a junior at Tyner. “Now we do.”
Palmer and her classmates are working on the house’s thermal roof, and in coming weeks will be adding solar panels, a composting toilet and a solar oven to the structure.
“You kind of forget you’re at school when you’re working on this,” 10th-grader Demetrius Williams said.