The city came out to the farm today. Forty-one inner city junior high kids (and we are talking INNER CITY) came out to a small park in ol' Northwest Ohio to get "hands on" experience with streams and wetlands.
After I put them through a macroinvertebrate ID excercise and showed them the fish I collected in the morning, I got the question. "Um, Jeff, can we go in the stream?". With some apprehension, and some ground rules, I let them bang around in the one single riffle of a small stream. Four-in-a time, and your hands must be wet if you touch a fish :)
I've never seen kids as excited and happy as these kids were. Not only the guys, but the girls all came in as well. In their clothes. No waders, no shorts. School clothes, with new sneakers. They were so desperate to touch nature (i.e. crayfish, craneflies, greensides, stonerollers) and to just be in the stream. Many came back in after their turns, and stuck around to look under stones for mayflies later on.
Most of us wouldn't of even shook a stick-in-the species list, but the kids didn't care. They just wanted to be outside touching things.
A feel good story from Jeff.
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<DIV>The city came out to the farm today. Forty-one inner city junior high kids (and we are talking INNER CITY) came out to a small park in ol' Northwest Ohio to get "hands on" experience with streams and wetlands.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>After I put them through a macroinvertebrate ID excercise and showed them the fish I collected in the morning, I got the question. "Um, Jeff, can we go in the stream?". With some apprehension, and some ground rules, I let them bang around in the one single riffle of a small stream. Four-in-a time, and your hands must be wet if you touch a fish :)</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>I've never seen kids as excited and happy as these kids were. Not only the guys, but the girls all came in as well. In their clothes. No waders, no shorts. School clothes, with new sneakers. They were so desperate to touch nature (i.e. crayfish, craneflies, greensides, stonerollers) and to just be in the stream. Many came back in after their turns, and stuck around to look under stones for mayflies later on. </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Most of us wouldn't of even shook a stick-in-the species list, but the kids didn't care. They just wanted to be outside touching things.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>A feel good story from Jeff.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV><p>
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