Powell Middle School’s Life Skills Lite class had the chance to show off months of hard work on Friday as students presented their Trout in the Classroom project. The small tank of rainbow trout they brought with them attracted quite a few eyeballs, including those of a curious child and his dad.

Grinning ear to ear, young Dean Pickar even got to feed the trout under the guidance of the middle school students alongside his dad Dan.

Pickar, “probably enjoyed it and learned a new thing that he never learned about,” student Ky Nuss said. 

Nuss liked that people outside of the class were able to stop by and see the trout and feed them, “Feeding the fish is my favorite, and seeing them attack it … they’re like Hungry Hippos,” he said. 

The students have been caring for the trout since they were delivered as eggs in January and there’s not much left to do besides keep them alive until May 5 when Game and Fish will release them into Homesteader Pond.

“But I will say keeping the tank clean is tricky. When you put, say, 100 fish in a 55-gallon tank, and they’re fed several times a day, the tank is going to get cloudy once in a while, but they’re doing well, so I don’t want to change too much,” Life Skills Lite teacher Michelle Giltner said, adding with a chuckle, “I don’t want to alter whatever is working well.”

Most of the learning with the trout project has been hands-on and students have been able to observe the growth process and life cycle of the trout.

“It’s not something you get to see,” Giltner said. “You know the bird goes from the egg to the chick to the bird, but we don’t get to really see that whole process … right in front of our eyes in a tank,” Giltner said.

Seeing the life cycle helps student Andrew Coulter compare the size and types of fish he catches, he said. His favorite part of the life cycle was watching the fish emerge from eggs. 

Coulter and his classmates have been watching the fish closely while helping to raise them to maturity. They’ve slowly increased the gauge of the grit the trout eat, cleaned the tank and maintained adequate PH levels.

In January, about 150 trout were given to the class. While trout have a low survival rate, in the Life Skills Lite classroom just over 100 remain. 

Noah MacDonald, one of Giltner’s students, expected only 15 to survive.

“It was happy that not a lot died, and I liked it that we had [more than I was expecting],” MacDonald said.