Aquatic and astronomy teacher Mark Romano incorporates hands-on experience in his classroom, setting up fish tanks for his students to enjoy as he believes his class is brought to life by them.
Romano started incorporating fish tanks into his class seven years ago to better demonstrate lessons; through this, he believes his students have benefited greatly.
“The students get involved,” Romano said. “Some kids that would normally never get up out of their seats show more interest because there’s something real in the classroom. When I was a kid I loved hands-on real world stuff and I try to do that as a teacher too.”
Romano believes the fish tanks help demonstrate his own love for nature.
“When I got the opportunity to teach [aquatic science] as an elective I took it,” Romano said.
“I’m a nature boy, I’m always out camping and hiking and always around these aquatic environments.”
Romano uses his tanks as examples throughout his lessons and believes they help his students better understand certain units.
“I set up a tank to set up a self-sustaining ecosystem to teach my students about different nutrient cycles and predator-prey relationships,” Romano said. “It’s a really good example when we talk about ecology or when students wanna know how to set up their own fish tanks.”
One tank in particular has been receiving extra attention from his students as trout hatchlings were introduced into the class.
“Having the trout here allows aquatic science students to see the earliest half of the life cycle of a trout,” Romano said. “They see them from eggs, they hatch and they go through the different stages until they release them in the river a couple months later.”
Senior Lily Smith enjoys seeing the trout grow and looks forward to seeing the different stages they go through.
“Watching them hatch and get bigger has been my favorite part,” Smith said. “It’s really interesting to watch their phases of life, their little yolk slacks disappearing and them actually being able to eat real food and us watching them grow from that point.”
Senior Kira Dagenhart learned through this experience the importance of setting up the tank and believes having the trout in class is a unique opportunity.
“I learned that we have to prepare the water and the tank a good amount of time beforehand so that the fish wouldn’t die whenever we put them in,” Dagenheart said. “This isn’t something you get to experience at every school, it’s a new opportunity. Especially for people interested in ecosystems [this] helps them have a deeper understanding about this.”
Romano has not only shared the love for fish with his students, but has also started sharing his fish tanks with the rest of world
“I have some of the special ed students from the J-wing come in and they just love the fish,” Romano said. “There was [a fish tank] in the window and it caught one of the student’s eyes and they asked if they could see the fish one day and I said, sure.”
Romano said the J-wing students now look forward to seeing the fish tanks and are motivated to get their work done so they can visit Romano’s class.
“They’ll come into my seventh period class most of the time and it’s just wonderful to see them light up,” Romano said. “I figured why not just share with everybody?”
Romano took inspiration from a previous colleague to live stream his fish tanks and sees multiple benefits in it.
“People all over the world can see [the fish], there was one guy that had a blue crayfish, like our blue crayfish, Freddie, and so Freddie now has a friend,” Romano said. “It’s cool to see people with common interests and connecting with other people too is kind of neat.”
Romano believes the live stream is his way of providing something calming to the rest of the campus, and the world.
“Whenever I put it up on my screen, I can just feel people looking at it being calmer and taking their minds off of stuff,” Romano said. “If it helps somebody even just one person do that, that’s awesome.
