SRU fraternity digs in at Summit Township Elementary
SUMMIT TWP — For Dylan Eyth, charity begins pretty close to home.
The Slippery Rock University sophomore didn’t attend Summit Township Elementary School, but his mother, Angela Eyth, has been a fourth-grade teacher there for 30 years.
So, when she and the school needed some help moving dirt to shore up sunken spots around the playground’s borders and ready the school’s raised vegetable plots for planting, Eyth brought in 17 members of his Pi Kappa Phi fraternity Saturday morning to provide workers.
“My mom’s been a teacher here. She’s so dedicated. I’m glad to be able to help. It’s come full circle,” said Eyth, the president of the social fraternity. He said he was pleasantly surprised his fraternity brothers agreed to get up before 8 a.m. on a Saturday to pitch in at the school at 351 Brinker Road.
“We get a volunteer opportunity and help out at the school at the same time,” he said. “Hopefully, we will make it out here more often.”
Tara Huntsman, a member of the school’s PTO, brought her 10-year-old twins Declan and Cullen to help with the vegetable beds.
She said the participation of Pi Kappa Phi was helping to end this phase of the playground work.
“This has been a long project. The PTO and the township got grants to do it,” Huntsman said. Playground equipment was installed in phases, with the swings placed in 2021.
“But the dirt was settling in outside of the ridges to the playground. It was a hazard to the students,” she said. She added Bauer Excavating of Herman donated a tri-axle truckload of dirt for free, but workers were needed to move the dirt and tamp it down to fill in sunken spots around the playground’s edges.
Angela Eyth, working on the vegetable beds behind the school, said the beds as well as the new outdoor learning center and the greenhouse are part of the school’s Community Agriculture Partnership.
“We’re an ag-focused school,” she said. “We teach the normal curriculum. We use ag elements to enrich the learning.”
For example, the school uses aquaponics and hydroponics in the classrooms. In her fourth-grade class, Eyth is using a plant race between pole beans and snap peas to see which plant can grow to the ceiling fastest.
“After Easter, we’ll be teaching embryology for a unit on chicken eggs to hatch chicks,” she said.
Each of the classes at the school is in charge of four vegetable beds. The harvest of corn, squash, beans and other vegetables will go to people in the community as well as to the farmers’ market being set up at Broad Street Elementary School in Butler.
“We’re not teaching students to be farmers. We’re teaching them problem-solving. The ag lessons are for enrichment of the learning,” she said.
Chad Broman, principal at Summit Township Elementary, said the agriculture activities can be tied into partnerships at other elementary schools in the district.
“The plan is to have a ‘farmbot’ attached to a 12-by-20 raised bed in the greenhouse that will be able to weed, plant and water,” said Broman. The other schools’ STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) classes will be able to tend to a section of the bed using remote controls and Wi-Fi cameras.
“We hope to have this by next fall, but don’t hold us to that,” he said.
Angela Eyth, who was named 2020 Farm Bureau Agricultural Teacher of the Year, said the school staff and students have taken to the agriculture partnership.
“It’s amazing, beyond what I dreamed of,” she said.
