Amid national health concerns, public schools in the region have closed for several weeks, which is less than good news to the hundreds of trout fingerlings that have been growing under the loving care of students for the past six months in 21 classrooms throughout Virginia and North Carolina.
Students receive the trout eggs in the fall or early winter through the Trout in the Classroom (TIC) program.
The TIC program is an award-winning program for students from pre-k to high school who learn to: raise trout from eggs to fingerlings, monitor water quality, engage in stream habitat and ecosystem studies, appreciate water resources and foster a conservation ethic.
Students care for the eggs until they hatch and become fingerlings, ultimately releasing them in the spring into a local approved cold water stream.
During the program, students learn to see connections between the trout, water resources, stream ecosystem and themselves. Teachers have shared that their students have shown improved behavior and attendance, in addition to increased math, science and language arts skills.
This program was founded by Dr. David Jones, local orthodontist in Martinsville, and is a partnership between Dan River Basin Association (DRBA), Trout Unlimited, and the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.
The trout eggs are picked up from the VDGIF state hatcheries, and the streams where the trout are released are approved by VDGIF Biologists.
Krista Hodges, DRBA’s education and outreach manager, said that she anticipated potential closings even before the schools made the announcement and immediately began planning how to continue to care for the young trout while teachers and students could not.
She offered each teacher the option to release the trout early, evacuate them to a temporary home outside of the school or to keep them in the classroom if they were able to care for them while the school was closed. Hodges said that every teacher who participates in the TIC program is very concerned about the health and welfare of the young trout not only because they are a unique and impactful teaching tool, but because their students had poured their hearts into raising them and caring for them for so long.
Hodges is working to put together a video of a trout release with educational programming for teachers who decide to release their trout early so that their students can still virtually experience seeing their trout enter a stream or river for the first time.
Hodges, the entire DRBA staff and board of directors, and her group of caring volunteers are doing everything possible to make sure the hard work of so many students will be saved and eventually find their way into an approved stream or river.
