After a semester of caring for the trout as part of Lackawanna County Conservation District’s ‘Trout in the Classroom’ program, kindergarten students from John F. Kennedy Elementary School got to see them grow from eggs to fingerlings and finally release them into DeSandis Pond in Covington Township on Friday.
Lackawanna County Conservation District Watershed Specialist, Bailey White, says, “The goal of the program is to teach students about conservation, and just be more, just be better stewards of the Earth.”
While students watch their trout grow in the classroom, they learn about freshwater ecosystems and the importance of water quality in the outdoors.
“I mean, these are kindergarten kids, and they just like to see life in another, they just like to see life. I mean, kids, like, it’s like having a gerbil in the classroom, but this way they actually get to learn about it,” says White.
After releasing their trout, students learned about what they eat in the wild, how pollution can affect their habitat, and about different animals that live in the same ecosystem.
John F. Kennedy Elementary School kindergarten teacher, Stephanie Golosky, says, “A lot of the students will never get to experience something like this. They learned all about the lifecycle of the rainbow trout. They got to watch everything happen, first-hand, at school. They’re really enjoying today. They’re putting their little scientist minds to work.”
White says, “Hopefully, in that way we can instill some sort of inspiration in them at a young age because if we can plant a seed now it’s going to grow much bigger by the time that they’re in middle school and high school than if we started later on in their education.”
White hopes to grow the trout in the classroom program from four to eight classrooms next year.