Coal trip Day 6 - 7/22/11

Today we got to go underground in a working coal mine in Wayne County. This may have been the highlight of the trip for me. To see how these men worked the high coal was amazing. The safety measures that arr in place are very different from when I was a child and went to work with my dad. While the mine is still a dangerous place to work these risks can be minimized by following correct safety proceedures. This was seen by their safety incentive program in which they had been working over 3 months without a reportable injury. We saw firsr hand how easy it could be to injure youself when a piece of the roof nearly fell on us. We then learned to look up as you walked.
This entire week was very eye opening to me. When my wife asked me about the trip I talked for over an hour about what we saw. I guess is was excited.
Next week Rick Sharpe, Bonnie Connor and myself are taking some students to Greenbank to be trained to look for pulsars. I am going to take my lab quest and take water samples. I am planning on making a data table with the raw data and the have my students use the charts to determine the water quality as an introduction to the lab. I am going to use this in the first week of school to begin having them using excel making spreadsheets.
This entire experience was the best staff development/traimg I have every had. There are many pieces of it that i will be using in the classroom to help my students.