With archetypal Puget Sound spring rain clouds lumbering above them, a large group of kindergarten students from the TOPS (The Option Program at Seward) school descended upon Pritchard Beach just north of the Seward Park peninsula on Thursday, April 6, bearing live coho salmon fry.
The excited group of more than 50 young students each took their turn at releasing the small salmon into the waters of Lake Washington. TOPS kindergarten teacher Joby Moore estimated the children stocked the lake with more than 150 baby salmon. Moore, along with Lana Fuller and Joan O'Connor, chaperoned the children through the process.
A diverse and successful K-8 alternative school within the Seattle Public School District, TOPS has been functioning for the past 18 years. It is located in the historic Seward School in the Eastlake neighborhood. The coho release was part of the children's environmental education unit they undergo each fall.
According to Joby Moore, one of the TOPS kindergarten teachers, the kindergarteners teamed up with the school's fifth-graders in January to raise the coho from eggs they nurtured in an aquarium they maintained within their classroom. Moore said the hands-on natural science teaching tool is part of the school's "taking care of the Earth unit." For the past decade this interactive, outdoor education teaching component has been evolving at TOPS, according to Moore.
For the salmon project, Moore said the fifth-graders kicked it off by taking a field trip to the Cedar River to witness the robust salmon spawning grounds. Next, the children planted the fertilized salmon eggs in their aquarium. For the next three and a half months the kindergarten students would visit the salmon in their older schoolmates' classroom, in groups of four, for one half-hour each school day.
Moore said one of the kindergarten students' jobs during this time was to observe the progress of the eggs and record in their science journals what they witnessed using drawings and descriptions to the best of their abilities.
Unfortunately, Moore said this year the TOPS fifth-graders had a scheduling conflict and were unable to help release the salmon at the Pritchard Beach location, which left the chore up to their excited, younger classmates.
The school began coming to the area several years ago when they volunteered their time to help with the native habitat restoration efforts taking place at Pritchard Beach. Moore hopes her school will be able to deepen their students' volunteer and educational efforts at Pritchard Beach in the future.
Erik Hansen may be reached via editor@sdistrictjournal.com.
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