WORKING TOGETHER
On June the 30th I received a phone call from Jackie Walker, a member of the Butler Treasure Hunters and the Monroeville Area Metal Detecting Club. Jackie was asking for volunteers to help with a metal detecting demo at the North Hills Junior High School for a summer school class of challenged children. I immediately emailed the Butler club members and received a reply from Red Craft who volunteered to help on this short notice.
On July the 2nd we all met at the school at 8:00am. Those present were the following:
Jackie Walker, member of the Butler County Treasure Hunting Club and the Monroeville Area Metal Detecting Club..
Donna Walker, member of the Butler County Treasure Hunting Club and the Monroeville Area Metal Detecting Club.
Alexa Walker, member of the Monroeville Area Metal Detecting Club.
Ron Foster, member of the Monroeville Area Metal Detecting Club.
Red Craft, member of the Butler County Treasurer Hunters and President of the Beaver County Detecting club.
Harry Niemeyer, member of the Butler, Monroeville, North Pittsburgh Past Finders clubs, Secretary of the Beaver County Detecting Club and Past president of the Mid-Atlantic East Coast Chapter of the F.M.D.A.C.
All are also members of the Federation of Metal Detector and Archaeological Clubs ( F.M.D.A.C.).
Jackie gave us a rundown of what we would be doing and what to expect. We then set up several hunt areas for the students to use.
We than went into the school to meet the class of 11 students that would be hunting.
We introduced ourselves as;
Jackie Walker
Donna Walker
Alexa Walker
And for fun we non Walkers spontaneously did the following,
Ron Walker
Harry Walker
Red as ‘Just Red’.
They all loved it and after the laughter died down we introduced ourselves with our real names.
There was a short description of metal detecting and the detectors. After which we all went to the ball field to search for treasures.
We had plenty of targets. Thanks to the many donations of coins and trinkets we were able to seed the field every time we changed students. Everyone had a full field of targets every time they started to hunt. Each student had at least two periods of hunting which lasted until they found all the targets. Of course they were allowed to keep all finds which really excited them.
Each of us had two students to work with; my two were Katie and Ryan.
I soon learned that I needed to hold their hand on the detector and to guide them through the hunt field to locate the targets.
After about two hours of teaching, hunting and enjoying a beautiful morning we all went into the school library for a period of show and tell.
Ron Foster had a gold nugget that he had found to show the students and he then held a raffle for that the nugget. There were eleven pieces of blank folded paper, with one having a drawing of a gold nugget on it. The student who drew the drawing of the nugget won the gold nugget.
The lucky winner was a young girl whose name was Kala. Congratulations kala
We than went to the snack room where there were several trays of homemade cookies. After a short while we bid them goodbye and left the school feeling very humble and proud of the morning’s events.
It was very nice to see members of several clubs working together to make someone’s day a bit happier.
Thank you.