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SCRANTON — Fourth-grade students in the Wyoming Valley West School District left their classrooms for a day to explore the inner workings of the train industry during a “Railroads, Rivers and You!” program at the Steamtown National Historic Site Tuesday afternoon.
Park Ranger Dan Kahl led students through a variety of demonstrations and hands-on activities, including measuring train tracks, learning about job descriptions of railroad employees and taking a ride on a handcar used to repair tracks. They also tested water from the Lackawanna River and viewed macro-invertebrates from the river.
“The students are having so much fun that they kind of forget they’re actually learning something, too,” Kahl said. “It’s nice to show them one doesn’t have to exclude the other. A lot of them liked the water quality testing and looking through the green magnifiers for critters that live in the river. The handcart is also a big hit. Overall, they just like the fact that they’re not in the classroom.”
Kahl also expressed the importance of introducing children to nature and the national park system.
“Getting them outside for one is a big thing,” he said. “Unfortunately today, with the weather, we didn’t get outside as much as we would have liked, but exposing them to our national parks is big.”
An added advantage for students participating in the program was receiving an entry pass good for one year for themselves and three family members to every national park in the nation through the Every Kid in a Park White House initiative.
According to Patricia Stiner, acting park ranger for Interpretation, Education and Cultural Resources at the Steamtown National Historic Site, approximately 120 students have participated in the program at Steamtown so far. Park officials hope that number grows to 1,200 by the end of the year.
“We have an $8,000 grant through the National Park Foundation to use for bus transportation to get students to the park and trail,” she said. “Our assistant superintendent, superintendent and Kahl worked together to come up with this collaboration with our partners at the Lackawanna Heritage Valley Trail to incorporate four common core standards for education. The (kids) are getting to learn and have fun along the way.”
Keith Godfrey, a fourth-grade teacher at Dana Street Elementary School in Forty Fort, was excited about how well the day’s activities tied into his classroom instruction.
“This program at Steamtown has given us a really nice segway to our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) curriculum,” he said. “This hands-on (experience) in front of all the trains with the tracks and engineers is wonderful. I really enjoyed the program and think there should be a lot more like this one.”
Student Serenity Hamilton visited the Steamtown National Historic Site for the first time and enjoyed the entire program.
“It was pretty cool learning how to measure the train tracks and wheels because I’ve never experienced things like this,” she said.
