Day FOUR

Today we had a field trip to the Red Hills Mine here in Mississippi! I did not even know that we mined coal here. It was an awesome experience. Before going on this trip, when I thought of "coal mines" I thought about October Sky and they dark, loud, dangerous conditions of the mines and how the workers would get sick and a children growing up in a "mining town" were destined to be miners and had little opportunity to "get out. I also thought about a movie (The Littlest Horse Thieves) about mining ponies that were used to move the coal out of the mines before things were mechanized.
I really enjoyed getting to ride the bus and see the actual process of the mining. One thing, that I did not realize is how they have a reclamation process to restore the land they have mined to the original state or better. They even will put streams/creeks back! This particular group had earned an award for their work on a stream because they did such a great job restoring it. We drove through some of the land they had already reclaimed and you could not even tell that it had been mined! It really helped me see how the mining industry is not a negative thing that I usually think of. Though it is a hard job still, it is not nearly as scary and dangerous as it used to be.

I'm not sure how I could connect today's trip to my Spanish class. I did think about how when the Spanish conquered the "New World" they mined the land of it's gold and silver. I found a reading on this topic,so maybe if my students did the field trip we could read about the Spanish mining the New World to connect it to the class.
http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/cowen/~gel115/115ch8.html

I really enjoyed going on the field trip. The staff did a great job teaching about the mining process and making it an enjoyable experience. I also liked the chance to get to know my fellow classmates better by doing the activity and of course the van ride!