Connellsville vo-tech engages families with ‘Touch-a-Truck’ program
Kids got to climb on, see, touch, explore, interact and learn about trucks and other vehicles at the Connellsville Area Career and Technical Center’s Touch-a-Truck event.
Bret Kreiger and his son, Calvin, came from Greensburg for the unique hands-on experience that Touch-a-Truck offered. Bret Kreiger said, “I think it’s really cool that kids can come out and do something like this because there’s nowhere else that I’ve ever seen anything like this, where they come and get in the truck and see what it’s like.”
After exploring a dump truck with her little sister Savannah, Keira Henderson of Connellsville gave an enthusiastic two thumbs up to her Touch-a-Truck experience at the Connellsville Area Career and Technical Center.
Families had fun exploring and learning about all sorts of vehicles — even a Life Flight helicopter — when the Connellsville Area Career and Technical Center held its first-ever Touch-a-Truck event.
Despite the threat of rain on a recent Saturday in early May, organizers estimated that hundreds attended this fundraiser, which also featured a classic car show, a live DJ, drawings, food and door prizes.
“It’s exceeded our expectations,” said CACTC workforce development coordinator Shawna Little, who organized the event, along with district STEM coordinator Liz Pernelli and Karl Butchko, an auto collision instructor at the school.
“We wanted to do something for the community to bring them up to the CACTC, show them what we do here, and really let the kids have a hands-on experience,” Little said, adding that families came from around the region.
According to Butchko, the CACTC has hosted classic car shows for years that have been popular with adults. “But this year is the first for Touch-a-Truck,” he said, “and it brought out a lot of the young people in the community to touch the trucks and get involved in careers.”
Butchko said it was not hard to line up participants, in part because the students spread the word. “It’s advertised in the paper and we put signs up at businesses,” he said. “We had a lot of things posted on Facebook and social media. The kids shared it.”
That resulted in a variety of motorized conveyances on display. Kids could explore several semis from Cavanaugh Trucking and Pleasant Trucking, a dump-truck, a forklift, a farm tractor, a Bobcat loader, a tow-truck, a concrete mixer and a USPS residential delivery vehicle. The CACTC’s Protective Services Program vehicles included two ambulances, a fire truck and a police car. Fayette EMS had an ambulance and Bullskin Fire Department brought a fire truck, plus there was a Pennsylvania State Police car, along with a trooper to explain it.
Interesting as those vehicles were, they were trumped when the LifeFlight helicopter landed and the pilot flung open its doors for all to see.
“I think the helicopter was the biggest hit; it was pretty cool,” said Kayla Goller of Ohiopyle, who teaches learning support English at CACTC. She brought her son and his cousin, and declared, “They loved it!”
Goller was joined by other instructors, including Mary Sabatula, a resident of Connellsville who teaches math at a Connellsville middle school. She said she had two reasons for bringing her children, Ethan and Emily: “One — to support the school. I think it’s a great activity that students are taking their time out today to spend time with our kids, and two — because they just love to learn, and my kids were just excited to come out and see all of this.”
Goller’s brother, Dominic Grenaldo, an English teacher at the CACTC, noted that two local communities near Pittsburgh had Touch-a-Truck events recently. The Connellsville resident said, “It’s nice to know that we have very similar events out here — and it says a lot about our district, too, that we bring something here to have some fun.”
Grenaldo continued, “You want to make sure kids are familiar with transportation. You don’t want them to be fearful of it. Kids have a natural affinity for it, so why not let them indulge that in a nice environment, as well as raise some funds?”
Touch-a-Truck was not just about education; it had also had a charitable component. The event served as a fundraiser for the school’s chapter of SkillsUSA, a nationwide partnership of students, teachers and industry that sponsors competitions to support career and technical education. Funds raised during the day will go toward travel expenses for CACTC students to compete against their peers from around the state and nation.
There was also a food drive for Connellsville Area Community Ministries’ food pantry. Admission to Touch-a-Truck was free, but organizers asked guests to bring canned vegetables, non-perishable breakfast foods, peanut butter, jelly and other non-perishable foods.
It was clear from all the honking horns, smiling faces, whoops of delight and taking of photos that the children (and their parents) really enjoyed themselves at the CACTC’s Touch-a-Truck event.
A somewhat hesitant exhibitor — and the father of a CACTC student — found his own joy in letting kids crawl all over his big rig. JD Means of Connellsville is a long-distance driver for Arsenberger Trucking.
Means, who hauls steel coils east and brings demolition debris back west, brought his own rig to Touch-a-Truck after hearing about the event from his son.
“At first, I really didn’t want kids in and out of my truck,” he admitted. “But after seeing the first couple smiling, it was all worth it. A lot of the young ones, they were in amazement.”