TORRINGTON – After Christmas break, Jenna Krul welcomed her 95 students back into the classroom, with the welcome addition of roughly 400 trout eggs.

Students spend at least 20 of 50 minutes in their class period tending to the fish, checking pH levels in the water, cleaning the tank when necessary, writing in their colorful trout journals about their experiences. The class motto is, “only the strong survive,” which softens the blow when a fingerling is found dead among its swimming counterparts. 

Krul’s sixth-grade science students at Torrington Middle School get to experience the life cycle of trout thanks to the nationwide Trout in the Classroom project, sponsored by Trout Unlimited, a conservation organization that aims to protect coldwater fisheries and their watersheds. The project allows students and educators to raise trout from eggs to fry, which takes roughly six months, from January to May.

Krul is a Trout in the Classroom veteran, having participated in the program for the past five years at Bayard Elementary in Bayard, Neb., where she previously taught fifth grade and then science for grades four through six.  She said her trout were a community staple, drawing students and neighbors alike to watch them grow.

When she arrived at TMS, Krul knew she wanted to bring the project to students. Krul’s is now the first classroom in Wyoming to participate in the Trout in the Classroom program.

“There’s already teachers reaching out about doing it next year,” Krul said. 

Mike Jensen, Wyoming Council Coordinator for Trout Unlimited, delivered the trout eggs to Krul’s classroom in early January. He said he’s looking forward to keeping track of Krul’s students’ work and getting more Wyoming schools involved moving forward, especially on the eastern side of the state where there’s a lack in major trout fisheries.

“We’re here to help support her and her students to make this a positive environmental education program experience for the students,” Jensen said.

The sixth-grade science curriculum runs the gamut of subjects – space, ecosystems, cells, etc. – but reading a textbook can’t compare to the six-month long task of keeping organisms alive. As they move into lessons on multicellular organisms, Krul places one of the eggs that won’t survive after a tank-cleaning mishap under the microscope so the class could see a living cell up close and in-person. 

Unfortunately, the majority of the trout hatched from their transparent, orange shells on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, when students were off from school, so when they returned from the long weekend, eggs were suddenly fingerlings. And one day, weeks from now, when they cross the threshold, fingerlings will have developed into fry. 

Krul made it clear that though she’s in charge, her students have taken the reins in caring for the tank of trout. Laney Walters, one of Krul’s sixth-graders, recalled from a journal entry the experience of removing dead trout eggs from the tank. 

“They were white and squished out and they looked really weird,” Walters said.

According to Krul, these dead eggs “will attach themselves to other living eggs so we had to take it out or else it will kill them.”

Krul said in the past, she started with approximately 80 trout eggs and had 13 live to go onto a pond, so this year, she hopes to keep a few more alive. To the horror of some and the delight of other young tweens, the fish will eat one another, too. 

“Sometimes, the more aggressive trout we’ll have to put in timeout, we’ll put him in the hatch net by himself,” she said. 

Krul said where the trout will eventually live out the rest of their days is still uncertain, but whether they end up fish food or back in a hatchery, they were born and raised in the halls of TMS.

“It’s still pretty fresh,” she said. “We’ve only been in it for two weeks, but it’s so awesome so far, we’ve learned a lot, so far.”