Trout in the Classroom

"It's more than just biology, it's conservation, it's social studies, it's math, it's art." That is what Riverside elementary school teacher Carrie Prange says about a program called Trout in the Classroom. The program allows Idaho school children to track the development of rainbow trout from fertilized egg to fingerling. The kids even get to take a field trip to release the trout they raise into local waterways. On a crisp morning in early February, Idaho Fish and Game resident hatcheries manager Tom Frew loads a red cooler into the back of his pickup truck at headquarters in downtown Boise. Inside the cooler are Ziploc freezer bags, containing tiny orange globes. They are trout eggs Frew will deliver to various classrooms in the Treasure Valley. One week later, two fourth graders at Riverside Elementary peer through the glass side of a fish tank at the tiny eggs, each of which displays two black dots, the eyes of the developing trout. "The one in the beaker is moving around," says one of the observers. "Let's name the biggest one Jaws," says the other. It's10:35 a.m., and these are the only two students in the classroom. The rest are outside playing kickball, and climbing on monkey bars."They'll give up their recess to come in and observe," Mrs. Prange says. Fish biologist Mark Liter started the Trout in the Classroom program in Idaho a decade ago when he was working in Fish and Game's Salmon office. Mark and other Fish and Game employees teamed up with the American Fisheries Society to develop the unique curriculum for kids in kindergarten through grade 12. When members of the Ted Trueblood chapter of Trout Unlimited found out about the program, they started working to introduce it to students in Idaho's capital city. Carrie Prange and her husband Richard were at a TU meeting when the chairman asked if anyone knew a teacher who would be interested in participating. Richard contacted Tom Frew about getting some eggs for Carrie's classroom, and from there, Trout in the Classroom began spreading through the Treasure Valley. "Richard, Carrie and I tag teamed it for a couple of years and as the program outgrew our capabilities, we asked other fish biologists to become mentor' biologists for the teachers," Frew said "The interest was strong enough that each teacher has a mentor fish biologist that helps with basic aquarium operations, speaking to the classrooms as needed, doing anatomy lessons, whatever." Today 19 classrooms in the Treasure Valley participate. Biologists from Fish and Game, the US Forest Service, Bureau of Reclamation, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service all serve as mentors. "It's grown each year by word of mouth," Richard Prange said "We haven't promoted it, because it may get too big to handle." Two to four new Treasure Valley schools jump in every year. Across Idaho, nearly 3,000 students learn from Trout in the Classroom in schools from the Panhandle to the Magic Valley. The students seem to respond to the living, breathing science project in a way kids will not respond to words on a page. "They get really excited about science because they feel like they are scientists," said Mrs. Prange. Her students agree. Learning about science from fish is better than learning about it from books."I think it's more fun this way because you get to see it actually happen," said Kyle Tanner, a fourth grader in Mrs. Prange's class. In the first week Kyle learned that only one trout will survive for every 5,000 eggs laid in a natural stream. "It surprised me," Kyle said "I thought they would all survive." Richard Prange believes 90 of the 107 eggs inside the Riverside classroom will hatch with the help of a $600 chiller donated by Trout Unlimited. Some of the newer teachers participating in Trout in the Classroom focus on the obvious subject, biology. Mrs. Prange has taken it much further than that. "This program teaches across the curriculum." Prange said. In her class, the students write poems about the trout, making them a part of the language curriculum. In social studies class, the kids learn that rainbow trout are a distant cousin to Idaho's state trout, the cutthroat. The students gather and analyze data, making this a math lesson. They even make ceramic trout in art. In late April or early May, the kids will load their surviving fingerling trout into a bucket full of water and haul them to a nearby stream to release them into their natural environment. At that moment, Mrs. Prange hopes the most important lesson of all will hit home. "Hopefully if students learn from this curriculum, they'll be better stewards of our resources."