Parker Students' Watershed Snapshot

Springtime Creeks- Turbid and Higher

Creekers "Zoom" onto Television

Two of our Creek Connections schools will be famous on television. Conneaut Lake Jr. High School and Sherman Central School will showcase their involvement in Creek Connections in two separate episodes of the “Zoom” kids show on WQLN Erie. This national show on the Public Broadcasting System was “created for kids by kids” offering them numerous ideas for how to get involved in their communities and creative ways to learn more about science, arts, and technology. This spring season, PBS stations will be introducing local episodes focusing on interesting things that regional young people do.

The 7th graders from Mrs. Jacob’s Conneaut Lake Jr. High School class looked into the camera on January 8 and loudly stated, “Get ready to ZOOM!” Ready to be filmed, the students conducted their water quality monitoring at their Geneva Marsh field site – a very unique site because it is Pennsylvania’s largest wetland. Studying wetlands would serve as the theme of the show’s episode.

Although it was a cold day, the students did a great job of conducting their tests to learn more about the marsh. “By going and testing and submitting the data to [Creek Connections] helps us figure out ways to make our waterways more healthy because our waterways are vital to our future,” claimed Larry Lubomski while on the way to the next filming location. Logan Rendulic added, “Continuing to monitor can help us in the future to find better ways to protect the water, not pollute the water, help clean the water, maybe see things that could be pulled out easily.”

The Conneaut Lake students were also filmed in their classroom doing many of the things that all our Creek Connections schools do – graphing water quality data, entering data into the computer, and studying aquatic organisms. Different students were selected for certain speaking parts or voice-overs and the entire class had a few lines to recite in unison, sometimes taking quite a few takes. Elizabeth Lundgren felt that “some people are afraid to give speeches and if they see themselves on television, they may realize they can do it.”

Being on television “will be neat because my friends and family will get to see me and ..... what we are doing in school,” exclaimed Amber Fry. Suzie Black said people watching will “understand our learning experience doing the chemical tests and seeing what we were trying to find – water bugs and salamanders.” In fact, everyone that watches the show will learn more about wetland creatures because the question of the day for the show was “what lives in a wetland?” Most of the students in the class had the chance to answer the question by giving an example of an organism and holding up either a picture of it or a real specimen. Wait ‘til you see the bald eagle answer! The Conneaut Lake students hope to soar to fame when their episode airs on WQLN.

On February 12, Ms. Paul's 5th grade at Sherman Central School in Sherman New York took their turn at making television history. These students filmed an episode for what will be a second Creek Connections school’s appearance on "Zoom". The episode will focus on water testing and water quality with the Sherman students demonstrating water-testing techniques to other kids across the region.

The day of filming began with a trip to the Route 76 bridge in downtown Sherman where the students regularly collect water samples from French Creek. Because of the cold weather, the students and camera crew only visited the site briefly. Filming continued in the classroom. In addition to the WQLN camera crew, a reporter from the Post Journal in Jamestown, NY also visited the classroom. Eighth grade Sherman students were there to assist in the water testing. These eighth graders, who have participated in Creek Connections for three years, spoke for the camera and were interviewed for the newspaper. The fifth grade students also recited lines for the show as a group and talked individually about water testing.

Many students were excited to be on camera. As Ricky Pratt stated, "I think it will make me famous." Some of the students who had lines to recite or specific tasks to carry out in front of the camera were nervous. After the group filming Allison Weilacher explained, "I was nervous; I was afraid I was going to drop something," but she also remembered Ms. Paul's earlier advice to the class not to "wiggle around" on camera. The students had wonderful acting skills and behaved very professionally.

The Sherman students were excited to show off French Creek to television viewers across the region. In the classroom they discussed the importance of the creek. Shawn Tyma mentioned that, "French Creek has lots of animals," and provides habitat for wildlife in the area. Sherman’s location on French Creek is significant geographically because it is located almost at the beginning of this long creek that is connected to downstream waterways. As Amelia Laughlin explains, “It [French Creek] flows down though the country and eventually to the Gulf of Mexico.”

If you want to catch the Sherman and Conneaut Lake students doing their waterway research on television, check out “Zoom” weekdays at 5:30pm on WQLN Erie. The Conneaut Lake episode will be aired on Friday, March 15 and the Sherman episode on a Friday, April 26 on WQLN. They will be aired again this summer. “Zoom” can be viewed 4:45pm or 5:00pm on WQED in Pittsburgh.

Back to Top

Frick International Studies Academy in Pittsburgh is tired of finding litter in the creek they sample – Nine Mile Run. During their routine sampling trips, the students felt that the beauty of their stream as well as the water quality was being compromised by this pollution. So a few of the students devised a unique plan to help reduce some of the trash and have entered their idea in a national competition.

Mrs. Corr’s students devised a trash rack that could be placed over a Commercial Avenue storm culvert that empties into Nine Mile Run, often emptying large amounts of trash and floating debris after a rainfall. The design process was rather extensive and involved background research, site investigations, attending community events, talking to experts, contacting various organizations and city employees, and calculating dimensions for the device.

Students met with Joan Blaustein from the Pittsburgh City Planning Department to learn more about restoration efforts currently underway for Nine Mile Run, discovering that their trash rack could be a helpful addition. Mike Lichte of the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority provided Frick with information regarding the culvert’s water volume, storm frequency, trash rack and grate designs, and equations that would be needed to calculate trash rack dimensions. To help with all the number crunching and equation interpretation, Frick called upon Timothy Kyper, Engineering Manager for GAI Consultants. He helped the students comprehend the necessary calculations for the trash rack and sparked the students’ hope that their idea could actually become a reality. It was a matter of creating a solid plan of action.

In January, Frick Middle School submitted this plan to the Bayer / NSF Award Competition, sponsored by Bayer Corporation, the National Science Foundation, and the Christopher Columbus Fellowship Foundation. The idea of the competition is simply to have middle school students work together as a team to solve a problem in their own community. As the competition states, “This is science at its best. Your team will identify a problem, look into it, come up with an innovative solution, refine the solution…and have fun doing it!”

Frick Middle School hopes to be one of the 30 teams from across the nation that will advance to the semifinals, from which 10 teams will be selected for finals judging. The finalist teams each win a $250 grant to develop their idea further and win an all-expense-paid trip for team members and their teacher to Epcot Center at Walt Disney World. Three teams win further prizes and savings bonds with the first place team also receiving a $25,000 Columbus Foundation Community Grant to help bring their idea to life in their community! If a winner, Frick will be able to create, implement, and maintain their trash rack for the next few years.

Determining all the necessary calculations for the trash rack and its installation proved to be difficult, allowing the Frick students to understand how comprehensive the steps must be to make an idea become a useful solution. But it did not stop the students’ enthusiasm and hopefully they are really proud of their plans. They tackled a real problem dealing with their waterway, offering a solution that would help improve their community. To find out more about the Bayer / NSF Award Competition: http://www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/events/bayernsf/start.htm

For one day every March, Parker Middle School heads out in all directions in their Conneauttee Creek Watershed to determine overall water quality. The students take numerous water samples from many different streams within the watershed - sites that they do not usually monitor otherwise. By conducting this watershed snapshot (gaining water quality data all from the exact same moment), the students can make comparisons amongst the different stream sites. They can determine which streams seem to be in good or poor condition, look for upstream and downstream treads, and discover how different the water chemistry can be between a small stream and larger creek.

Water testing snapshots are very useful tools to determine the health of an entire watershed at least during a particular moment in time. Taking the samples simultaneously in an area keeps the experimental condition of time and weather constant, allowing for better water quality comparisons between sites.

This year Parker Middle School is conducting their watershed snapshot on Saturday, March 16. Typically, approximately 10 sites are studied for the day. The Parker students will be displaying their results from the snapshot at the Student Research Symposium. Hopefully their results for the day reveal plenty of healthy waterways.