The maples were blooming in the courtyard of Meadowbrook Public Library on a sunny morning in Shawsville as sixty-six sixth graders from Randy Rudisil’s science class at Shawsville Middle School tested water quality and released trout into Spring Branch Run. Math teacher Katie Schendel and student teachers helped groups count drops of indicator solution to test creek water for nitrate, temperature, pH and ammonia levels that are healthy for fish.. As part of Trout in the Classroom program, the Virginia Council of Trout Unlimited supplies classrooms with fertilized fish eggs supplied by local hatcheries. Mr. Rudisill’s classes have been raising trout from eggs since last autumn, collecting data every day, plotting trends and monitoring growth from fingerling to fry before releasing the fish.
The goal of Trout in the Classroom is to increase student knowledge of water quality, but the organization says that its long-term goal is “to reconnect an increasingly urbanized population of youth to the system of streams, rivers, and watersheds that sustain them.” These programs have been in Virginia for ten years in hundreds of elementary, middle and high schools.
—Liz Kirchner
