Classroom Fingerlings Finally Get To Go With The Flow

By Kendra Bobowick

Rushing in circles and struggling to get out, a few fish managed to jump over the edge of the pail and land with a splash. Only a few inches long, the fingerlings, small fish raised from fertilized eggs in a St Rose School classroom this winter, finally swam free as students poured them into the Pootatuck River cup-by-cup Tuesday afternoon.

As part of a Trout In The Classroom program initiated by the Candlewood Valley chapter of Trout Unlimited (CVTU), a handful of students, parents, teachers, a few curious guests, and CVTU President James Belden edged down a muddy slope behind the Newtown Congregational Church at 92 Church Hill Road. The group gathered on the bank where a leg of Al’s Trail led to the water. As science teacher Marde Dimone handed out paper cups, Mr Belden descended the riverbank with the bucket of roughly 77 surviving fish from the 100-plus eggs nurtured since early November in a controlled tank in the new St Rose Science lab.

With the bucket settled in the waterlogged ground, students pushed their heads together as, one at a time, they reached in with cups to scoop out a fish. With a quick look at the fingerlings circling in the water, students knelt by the Pootatuck, and with their chins on their knees, they reached out a hand and poured the fish into the slow moving current. The classroom lesson that had started in November concluded as the fish swam away.

“It’s time to let them out to do their thing,” Mr Belden had said prior to the fish release Tuesday. Although Ms Dimone described the technical lessons — data keeping, controlled temperatures, feeding schedules, and more — another, less structured, lesson took place. Life cycles and procedures aside, children learned something else in the past months as they raised their fish, changed the water, and monitored fish growth.

“This really creates a connection between the kids and the environment,” Mr Belden said. “They understand the importance of clean water, they have a connection with other living things and understand that the living things need clean air and clean water.”

After feeding the fish and watching them develop, changing the water and maintaining its temperature, Mr Belden believes students began to care about the fish as living things. “It creates that little spark there — most of the classes really get it and love it,” he said.

Ms Dimone is also pleased that not only the grades 6 through 8 students benefited from the science lessons, but all the school’s students saw the fish tank regularly. All grades use the new science lab, she said. She took the upper grades through technical steps including reagents, data collection, water testing, temperature gauging, storage, and more, but deeper lessons also reached the classes. “They saw the whole cycle and biology, watched [the fish] hatch and develop,” she said.

She would like to do another Trout In The Classroom program, she said.