Ellie Pearce, left, follows Jim Cline's near-perfect casting form as other students practice.
It was an unusual sight. If you glanced at it driving by, you'd do a second take, have a second look.
There were a bunch of high school kids, standing in a neat row with fly lines unfurling in pretty loops behind them, (normal enough for a Montana high school) but these kids looked weird – and weirdly out of place.
It was Homecoming Week at Hamilton High. And the dress theme for the day was Hippies and Hicks. You'd see everything from dirty jeans, muck boots and dilapidated straw hats on one to bright tie-dyed everything and peace symbol earrings as big as saucers on another. The kids were having fun.
In the midst of it all Vanessa Haflich's and Joe Ruffatto's field biology and ecology class, Classroom Without Walls, was enjoying an activity closely aligned with their academic pursuits: learning to fly cast.
"Through the year we'll study aquatic systems, ornithology, and other areas of biology and ecology," Vanessa says. "We work with field biologists in their fields, doing the hands-on work that they do, and use our field experiences as the base for further scientific study."
The foundation for Classroom Without Walls is the learning opportunities provided by approximately twenty field study experiences.
"Right now we're starting an aquatic entomology study with a biologist in Missoula," Vanessa says. "We'll go out on the river and gather thousands of aquatic insects, sort, identify, and classify each one, and integrate our results with an ongoing multi-year study." The class's study will become part of a bigger picture of aquatic insect population trends and their bearing upon the aquatic ecology and health of our fishery ecosystems.
"The kids who enroll in this class have an interest in the outdoors, and some of them are already headed toward a professional career in field biology or ecology," Vanessa says.
Dave Ward is the president of Bitterroot Trout Unlimited, or BRTU. Dave has been instrumental in connecting Vanessa's class and others in the valley with TU's Trout in the Classroom project. Each year BRTU supplies Vanessa's students with fully equipped aquariums suitable for raising trout fry, monitoring equipment, and fertilized trout eggs to manage and rear until they can be released into a local pond.
Along the way these eggs and trout fry must be closely managed. The kids monitor and control water temperature, pH, turbidity, food supply and other variables necessary for trout survival. As the kids take on these responsibilities, they get personally involved. The first baby trout to poke their heads out of the sand are cause for celebration.
The kids come to care about those baby trout. And who knows – a future FWP biologist, caring for wild trout in a local stream, might be among them.
Another field study of trout ecology and aquatic insects involves fly fishing. To me, naturally, the course would seem incomplete without it. It includes the kid's recent casting session outdoors with fly rods and volunteer instructors from BRTU, and a future field trip to the river to put it together with their science-based studies.
That's why they were out on the lawn at Hamilton High school last Thursday, wearing their hippie or hick garb, as Vanessa and her teaching partner Joe Ruffatto taught them how to cast. They were assisted by a team of BRTU volunteers.
Dr. Gerald Baron, AKA Gerry, is a BRTU member and research scientist who brings that mindset to his fly fishing and casting instruction. Greg Chester is a past president of both Fly Fishers of the Bitterroot and Bitterroot TU. Jim Cline is an active TU'er who also was a president of FFB. Altogether, they're an accomplished crew.
These five people – Joe, Vanessa, Jim, Greg, and Gerry - did the real legwork. They each worked closely with a small groups of students, giving each one the individual attention they needed to become proficient flycasters – within the time frame of forty-five minutes. And the kids pulled it off.
My job was easy. All I had to do was demonstrate and watch. And as I did I thought: these kids are lucky. They have teachers like Vanessa and Joe who are willing to do the extra work to make the Classroom Without Walls program a reality.
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