Silverdale Helping Kids Learn to Fish
Summer is in full swing, but that hasn’t stopped the learning over at Silverdale Baptist Academy. In fact, the Seahawks are combining a favorite summer sport with science. Here’s News 12’s Angela Moryan with the story.
Angie: What did you learn when you were fishing today?
Said 7th grader Claire McCallie: “That fish are harder to catch than I remember.”
Just as the old adage goes — teach a man — or in this case kid — to fish and he’ll never go hungry again. This summer, Silverdale set out to satisfy the hunger for fresh air.
Said teacher Al Rogers: “It’s not just the teaching them how to fish. It’s the teaching them how to be outside, how to enjoy nature. And through all the things we’ve been through in the last year, especially with COVID, we’ve come to realize more and more, just being outdoors is more healthy, not only physically, but mentally.”
Students didn’t just learn to fish, but about fish, as well — all with help from the TVA shock boat.
Said TVA biologist Kurt Lakin: “It’s a standard fisheries that uses electricity to temporarily stun fish so that we can collect them and then look them over and release them unharmed, just to help study the fish populations.”
Said Rogers: “There’s nothing more rewarding as an educator than to see a kid in shock and awe of learning something, and that’s what we saw. Some of those kids when they saw the gar or when they saw the carp or when they saw the fish floating up, … Just seeing that, the kids just truly mesmorized by the cool things that God’s created just always, always excites me.”
Said 7th grader Gianna Giaccone: “It was pretty exciting. I liked how we had guest speakers come and talk to us about stuff.”
Said McCallie: “I learned that there’s a lot more fish than I thought there were, and there’s a bunch of different types of fishing techniques.”
Said Lakin: “Anytime we get to do an outreach and talk to kids who are interested in the environment, interested in being outside, interested in seeing the natural resources that we have in our backyard, it’s a good experience, and if any of them, just a few of them, go on to get in the field or it excites them to get outside and do things from hiking to fishing, it’s worth it.”
Said Rogers: “We had several that are very good at fishing, that have been doing it a long time. We had some that had never been fishing except maybe a few times. But I think we sparked a cool interest that’s going to get them outside more, and that’s the whole goal.”
