Jeff Perry, the Wise County superintendent, gave teachers permission to apply for the grants.
“With our ever-dwindling revenue, we’re very appreciative of the coal industry’s contribution,” Perry said. “They’re providing opportunities for teachers that would otherwise never exist.”
The school system and the coal industry have honored Bright Laney’s work. She was named CEDAR’s state teacher of the year in 2006 and 2009, winning a $1,000 award each time. Last year, the Interstate Mining Compact Commission named her its national teacher of the year, showering her with free educational products.
For her economics unit, Bright Laney won a $313 grant from CEDAR in addition to materials such as posters, books and videos about the coal industry. In one lesson, she asked students to “mine” chocolate chips out of cookies, awarding credit to those with the most chips. In another, the class played a game of Monopoly adapted to the topic, with properties renamed after mining camps.
Even though the grant was funded by the industry, she said, no bias entered into her teaching. She included a lesson on the rehabilitation of land after coal mining operations have stopped.
Dozens of other teachers applied for the CEDAR grants, pitching lesson plans with catchy titles. One was called “Dear Cole: Letters to a Coal Advice Columnist.” The organization has awarded about $550,000 in grants over 17 years and has given several hundred thousand dollars more in cash prizes for teachers and students.
CEDAR also offers a video to teachers called “The Greening of Planet Earth,” which says that “our world is deficient in carbon dioxide, and a doubling of atmospheric CO2 is very beneficial.” Mainstream scientists widely dispute that assertion.
CEDAR began offering grants to Wise teachers in 2005, the year after a boulder rolled off a local mining site, crushing and killing a 3-year-old boy named Jeremy Davidson in his family’s double-wide trailer. The incident helped galvanize local opposition to the coal industry just before the county began debating a new 1,200-acre coal mine. It is awaiting approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In the midst of that debate, CEDAR has expanded outreach in southwestern Virginia classrooms. Education analysts say such industry contributions to schools are not uncommon in energy-rich communities where mining or drilling projects draw controversy.
“These are places where industries wield significant power over politics and over education. They have clear agendas, but it can be hard for a superintendent to resist them,” said Alex Molnar, an expert on commercialism in education at the National Education Policy Center, affiliated with the University of Colorado.
In West Virginia’s northern panhandle, where natural gas discoveries have invigorated the local economy — and raised environmental concerns — another effort to influence the school curriculum is afoot. The West Virginia Oil and Natural Gas Association has held training sessions for public school teachers, distributing coloring books and other materials in a number of schools.
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