High School Lunchtime Projects - Betta Keeping

yvez9

you don't know JACK FISH
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Hello everyone at TFF! Haven't posted here in a while but glad to be back to some friendly posters here!
On topic now

My girlfriend just got hired as a high school teacher this year. She graduated last spring.
The school she'll be working at is holding activities during lunchtime for the students. The school offers a small budget (around 150$ for the year) and they are pretty open-minded with theese activities.

She's proposed a betta activity with students. Basically, each student would have one betta (the kids are 12-15 years old) to care for on lunchtime. This would include feeding, water changes, monitoring for health and such... Judith (my fiancée) will be supervising everything with the kids. At the end of the school year, the kids will be able to take the fish home if they buy a suitable bowl!

We'll be supplying spare bowls to the school for the year and also a 5 gallon tank we have. She'll just need to buy a few extra bowls, fish, dechlorinator and betta food. This should be accepted quite easily as a cheap activity.

Many teachers acutally find this to be a fascinating idea and many want to keep fish in their classroom now.

I'm just concerned this will get out of hand. I've seen many people eager to get fish, take care of them for a month or two then slacking off. If there are only 5 or 6 kids, it's not too bad but if teachers get involved in this, it might get out of hand now. Another teacher actually wants to bring in a 70 gallon tank for his ecology class or something like that to show animal behavior to students. That's great, but it needs dedication.

I had a teacher in my freshman high school year that kept chinchillas, bred rats, had a boa, a big nice fishtank, anoles, turtles... in his classroom. He would stay at least an hour extra everyday to care for the pets. He retired that summer and gave most of the pets away. Those who couldn't find takers died within a year...

Anyway, do you think this project would work? It is a great way to get kids interested in pets and also to give them responsibilities but on the other hand, it could easily get out of hand if people try to do too much and end up giving up after a while...
 
I think you'd get a lot of kids tapping on the sides of the bowls.
But if they can keep up with the water changes and feeding i think it would be good. I can see the 70g not being looked after properly though, given time
 
Not a good idea. You have no ideas what high schoolers can do behind teachers backs...
 
OA is exactly right, we are highschoolers, but we keep fish, we know how to treat them, but other highschoolers would just torture the bettas to hell
 
Anyone on this forum remember that Mountain Dew skit with that goldfish? Stuff like that can happen. DO NOT PUT UP THE LINK TO IT!
 
I'm afraid I hold the same opinion as you do
Hopefully, I think the bettas will be in a locked classroom that will only be open by a teacher and will therefore never be unsupervised (yeah, right). If that's the case, I guess it won't be as bad as you all said!

I guess it will be a learning for everyone if this goes through
 
i don't personally see a problem with the fish because they are probably going to be locked in a classroom when the teacher isn't there. my highschool science teacher had a pair of rats, some hissing cockroaches, and an iguana in her classroom and the kids never did anything to any of them. involvement in caring for animals is a very important thing for kids to learn as it fosters a lot of important qualities. This isn't a situation where any students will have unsupervised access to the animals. Or, doesn't sound like it, anyway.

as for the science teacher, if he thinks he can care for a 70g, what's the problem?
 
(Gary Coleman voice) Watchyu talking bout OA!?
DO NOT READ FOLLOWING POST IF YOUR SQUIEMISH










In the video, they had a goldfish in probably less than a 1 gallon and sucked out all the water, then filled it back up with mountain dew. They drained that and filled it back up with water. It was almost dead and then they shocked it with a 9V battery. :no:
 
other than what has been said

not many highschoolers find fish facinating :no:

but i guess as a class pet it would be ok
 
other than what has been said

not many highschoolers find fish facinating :no:

but i guess as a class pet it would be ok

Well there's well over 1000 students, so 5 or 6 out of the bunch isn't a whole lot. I'm sure 1% of the student body will want to try it out...
 

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