Upper St. Clair Students Work To Benefit Washington County Food Bank

UPPER ST. CLAIR, PA - Conceptual algebra students at Fort Couch Middle School and Upper St. Clair High school didn’t learn lessons about equations this year. They learned a valuable life lesson about helping the needy.

The students recently collected 4,326 food and clothing items and more than $700 for the Greater Washington County Food Bank. They also volunteered at the food bank, loading and unloading donations, sorting items, packing senior boxes and planting apple trees.

“The people who work at the food bank need help with every part of the process so that others can get the food that they need,” eighth grader Marlena Bononi said.

Added eighth-grader Keating Leavey: It’s important to volunteer because we have great lives and helping someone else have a great life is amazing.”

The outreach effort was coordinated by high school math teacher Shannon Strayer and Fort Couch math teacher Michelle Senneway. It’s the sixth year that the conceptual algebra classes have teamed up for a food drive.

“This year’s project was a great success,” Senneway said. “We more than doubled both our in-kind and monetary donations for the food bank.”

Strayer said the teachers linked the food and clothing drive to the algebra classes by creating an algebra equation or inequality and graphing the results daily.

“We value all food and clothing donations at $1.25 each and with the combination of all money and food/clothing collected want to have a ‘total value’ of at least $1,000,” she said. “We discuss how many more items (or how much more) money needs to be donated in order to hit the goal.”

Photo via Upper St. Clair School District.