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seasonal put-and-take trout fisheries
during cooler months.
Partnerships
The lineage of Trout in the
Classroom can be traced back to
the early 1980s with a partnership
between Canada's Department of
Fisheries and Oceans and the British
Columbia school system. Government
biologists trapped salmon from a local
river to supply schools with eggs and,
after some trial-and-error, students
successfully hatched coho salmon in
their classrooms.
The hatchery-in-the-classroom
concept expanded quickly to the
United States when the University of
California Cooperative Extension and
the U.S. Department of Education
partnered to grant funds to supply
California classrooms with coldwater
aquariums. Trout Unlimited, a
national non-profit organization whose
mission is to conserve, protect and
restore North America's coldwater
fisheries and their watersheds, joined
that partnership to equip even more
classrooms with mini-hatcheries.
Partnerships such as these drove the
expansion of the program throughout
the United States over the next
decades. Trout in the Classroom
programs are active in 35 states. Most
function as a cooperation of schools,
state conservation agencies such as
the Game and Parks Commission and
local Trout Unlimited chapters or other
private conservation organizations.
Trout in the Classroom came to
Nebraska via an aquatic educator's
conference in 2012, when Commission
staff attended a panel discussion led
by educators
from Michigan,
New York, South
Dakota, Idaho
and Pennsylvania.
Each shared
experience with
programs in
various stages of
development, from m
Fourth- and fifth-grade students from Walt Disney Elementary School in Millard toss fish food to rainbow trout during a field trip to
Schramm Park State Recreation Area in Gretna.
