Teach Wealth
Hackensack Riverkeeper’s Urban Watershed Education Program teaches middle school students how to fish. And through fishing, the students experience the wealth of a personal encounter with their local waterway.
We use games to teach kids about the fish that live in their local river or lake. Students conduct a cleanup of their school grounds and affix a permanent marker to stormdrains that reads, ‘Don’t Dump. Drains to Your River.’ They get on the water with Hackensack Riverkeeper Captain Bill Sheehan and try their hand at water quality testing. The final morning is spent learning to cast. Then they spend the day fishing. For many, this is their very first time holding a fishing rod.
Over the past decade, we have reached thousands of young people. Kids who live in an environment too often defined by pavement and concrete learn that no matter where they live, they are connected to nature. They just need to get out on the water.
This January, 850 students from H.B. Lee Middle School in Portland, Oregon became a sturgeon for an hour to conclude the Art For the Sky project, sponsored by Columbia Riverkeeper. Art For the Sky combines art, music, math, history and science and culminates in a gigantic living painting on the school’s athletic field colored and shaped by the living forms of participants.