Education students dig into coal debate

Rick Fatica

CARE seniors Eva Conrad (left) and Denise Bunsey pose with a backdrop they helped create for a coal project presentation.

The scene is the fall conference of the Institute for Democracy in Education, and Ohio University’s McCracken Hall is packed with educators from across the country. Before a crowd stands a group of 20 ninth-graders from Athens County’s Federal Hocking school district. The students are nervous. They shuffle; they giggle. But the educators are riveted nonetheless. For in this room, at this moment, the roles are reversed: The seasoned professionals are learning from the teens about a cutting-edge concept in education.

Called expeditionary learning, this educational theory puts responsibility for learning in the hands of students. In this case, Federal Hocking Middle School students worked with College of Education students and faculty last school year on a project examining whether the nearby Glouster coal mine should be reopened. And true to the mission of the project, the students took control, conducting research and interviewing environmental activists, merchants, coal miners and politicians. Students then organized their results into a readers forum for the national conference.

Their research was timely because the mine, which closed in the mid-1970s, reopened in May after much debate in the Glouster community. Students weighed in on the issue by presenting their research to local residents.

Students’ interviews offered a poignant view of coal mining in southeastern Ohio, as this comment from a former coal camp resident illustrates:

“Sometimes, before school, I had to go to the company store. We didn’t use money. We used a script card that kept a running bill. Whatever I had to buy was taken out of my father’s pay. Sometimes on payday, my father wouldn’t have any money left to be paid.”

The coal project was part of an ongoing College of Education program called Creating Active and Reflective Educators for Democratic Education, or CARE, in which faculty and students work with Federal Hocking teachers on everything from developing curriculum and computer software to large-scale projects such as the Glouster mine issue.

“The goal of CARE is to prepare young people to be active participants and citizens in their democratic communities,” says Rosalie Romano, CARE coordinator and an assistant professor of education.

Ohio University senior Eva Conrad was impressed by the middle-schoolers’ take-charge attitude in organizing field trips to Glouster.

“They surprised us in how motivated they were,” says Conrad, who along with senior Denise Bunsey put together the coal project proposal for the conference. “The experience they had was so much better than just reading about these issues in a book.”

— Nanette Kalis

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