Blake School Students Learn About Coal

The cover of Barbara Freese’s book Coal: A Human History shows a photo of a miserable young coal miner coated in the black stuff. The contrast couldn’t be any more different from the happy, clean faces of kindergarteners Freese spoke to Wednesday.

Freese visited the classroom as part of Blake’s Philip Otis Environmental Visiting Author Program—a program that sponsors biannual visits from authors who wrote on environmental themes. In addition to speaking to all Blake School divisions, she also took part in a public discussion Tuesday called "Global Warming and the Race to Build a Clean Energy Future."

Her talk to the kindergarteners was a scaled-down version that used props to illustrate how coal is formed. Starting with a tennis ball that stood in for the sun and a battery representing energy, Freese showed students how energy traveled from the sun to prehistoric trees, which were then buried and transformed into coal over millions of years.

When she was done, she held up coal that had traveled from the North Antelope Rochelle Mine in Northeastern Wyoming and told the students how power plants burn coal in massive furnaces to create electricity.

“So those are all good things, but there are also some bad things when you burn coal,” Freese said, taking out an inhaler. “When you have a fire that big, you have a lot of smoke.”

The students were intrigued by Freese’s talk—particularly when she told them about mile-long trains carrying loads of coal.

Still, others were skeptical about the way coal is created: “Is that a real tree inside of that coal?” one student asked.

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