'Stream Days' Puts Seneca Valley Middle Schoolers in Touch with Nature

In Creek Connections member Lauren Branby’s hands is what looks like a wet stick with spindly legs popping out of it, but as she explains to students, it actually is a Case-Building Caddisfly.

“It needs to have really healthy water to survive,” she told students.

Along with crayfish and a pair of parasitic lamprey eels, the caddisfly, which builds its own home, was among many macro-invertebrates found on campus as the students took part in the school’s annual Stream Days.

Science teacher Beatrice Kappeler said this is the third year for the event, which allows the school’s seventh-graders to take turns spending the day outdoors and, with the help of local experts, investigate the water quality of the stream that runs along the campus.

George Trew, a science teacher who helped oversee the event, said the students rotate among six stations and learn about water quality, water velocity and how to dissect a fish. Students also went on a scavenger hunt where they photographed bird nests, insects and poison ivy.

“We tell them not to touch that, just to take a photo of it,” Trew said with a laugh.

Aiding the seventh-graders were older Seneca Valley students who returned to the school to participate in Stream Days. Also on hand were members of Creek Connections, a collaboration between Allegheny College and public school districts in western Pennsylvania and New York that encourages natural science education; and ITT Water & Wastewater Leopold, a water quality group with an office in Zelienople.

“Each year we get more and more people,” Trew said. “It’s a lot of fun.”

Clad in thigh-high waders after guiding the students in the Little Connoquenessing stream, a handful of senior students who participated in the event on Wednesday agreed.

“It’s a lot of fun and it’s cool for us to come back and work with the seventh-graders,” Becca Greenstein said.

This year’s Stream Days took place Wednesday through Friday and will continue next week.

Trew said the school began holding stream days as a hands-on way to educate the students about ecology and environmental science. He was especially grateful the staff from ITT was there show students how to complete basic chemical water tests and more.

“We’re very lucky to have them here,” he said.