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Education takes a hike to Mill Creek park
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Neighbors | Christine Keeling.Austintown Fitch High School Physical Science teacher Jim Murphy took his student on a four-mile hike through Mill Creek Park May 5. He used the park to show students different types of geological processes.
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Neighbors | Christine Keeling.Austintown Fitch students Kirstyn Warren (left) and Alex Ronci answered questions about what they saw on a field trip they took with Physical Science teacher Jim Murphy to Mill Creek Park May 5.
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Neighbors | Christine Keeling.Students from Austintown Fitch High School took a break from their four-mile hike and enjoyed lunch at the Flats in Mill Creek Park. The group traveled to the park for a field trip May 5.
By CHRISTINE KEELING
Nothing breaks the tranquility of nature quite like 90 high school students talking and laughing as they traveled on the dirt path.
Physical Science teacher Jim Murphy took 90 Austintown Fitch students out of the classroom May 5 and into Mill Creek Metroparks for a four-mile hike, a lesson on geological processes and some folklore.
“They get to tie everything we’ve talked about together and see how all the sciences mesh,” Murphy said.
The group arrived at Bears Den Cabin and began lessons with a stop at a massive rock formation to learn how glaciers helped carve the surrounding environment. They continued up and down hills, on and off trails seeing examples of sedimentary and metamorphic rocks.
“It’s rough,” said ninth-grader Alyssa Conn during the first break. The troop trekked around the goldfish pond and through the woods to Pioneer Pavilion where Murphy stopped to tell the history of the blast furnace.
“They used technology and the nature around it,” Murphy explained.
The students heard the Slippery Rock tale of a boy who was swept off a rock due to rapid water flow and how his father blew the rock apart with dynamite.
After a brown-bag lunch at the Flats, the group began the final leg of the journey that ended at Lanterman’s Mill. There, the students watched Mill attendant Gary Meiter demonstrate the process of grinding flour and got to visit the gift shop for popcorn, beverages and candy.
“It was fun,” said ninth-grader Kristy Rocco.
This was the 10th year Murphy has taken Fitch students on the field trip. He said he felt it was an important exercise because the students can see the shape and lay of the land, match it with standards and tie it all together with the questions he handed out at the start of the trip.
“Kinetic energy, potential energy, physics, chemistry: most people only think of biology when they come down to the park, I put the other ones in,” Murphy said.