`TROUT IN THE CLASSROOM' FISHERY PROGRAM PROMOTES SCIENCE AND CONSERVATION.

Byline: BRETT PAULY Outdoors

As students from Sylmar's Harding Street School lined the banks of Piru Creek to release fish they had raised from eggs, fifth-grade teacher Vicki von Arx tried to explain the sadness some were feeling.

``They have mixed feelings,'' she said. ``They know that some will make it and some will not.''

After all, the third- and fifth-graders had nurtured the rainbow trout for six weeks, watching them hatch and grow to 1 inch while discovering details about their life cycle and habitat requirements, the importance of water quality and other lessons in conservation and ecology. The culmination of their science project, ``Trout in the Classroom,'' was at hand.

``I'm going to miss them a lot,'' said Janet Arreguin, 8, of Sylmar. ``Some make me laugh when they are running around the little aquarium.

``They helped me by surviving, and now I am surviving like some fish. I'm surviving because I'm learning. I learned what bugs fish eat and all that.''

Older students rationalized that letting the trout go was a good thing, a happy occasion.

``It was like exciting because we raise the fish and when they put them back. . . hopefully they will make more fishes,'' said Timothy Martinez, 11, of Sylmar.

Embraced by the Los Angeles Systemic Initiative - the L.A. Unified School District's math and science arm - for the past two years, ``Trout in the Classroom'' introduces children to ``yucky'' science in a friendly, hands-on manner, sometimes without them realizing it. Moreover, it transcends science, and education itself, covering many varied topics and involving resources outside the school, including the Department of Fish and Game, area fishing clubs, parents and the community at large.

``I think they are getting science and conservation fed to them without knowing they are learning anything. Teachers are sneaking it in on them,'' said Erwin Goldbloom of West Hills, education chairman for the Sierra Pacific Fly Fishers, one of more than a dozen Southland fly-angling clubs whose members are program volunteers.

``If the teachers are on the ball, they can go into other offshoots - reproduction, genetics, life cycles of bugs, plant life, the food chain. And spelling, essays, math - what percentage of fish make it, for example,'' said Goldbloom, donning waders for the Nov. 19 trout release northwest of Castaic to help with the collection of insects for basic lessons in entomology. ``It also gets them out here, which is nice.''

Taught in more than 40 LAUSD classrooms a year, the interest in ``Trout in the Classroom'' can have a snowball effect, said Chris Holle, LAUSD's science coordinator.

``You see this in more than one class and it excites the imagination of the whole school,'' Holle said. ``It's a way to get the community involved and the parents involved and give them a sense of stewardship. They have a greater sense of responsibility for the environment, so that when they go to it they have a new appreciation and understanding of it.''

Sylmar postal clerk Gloria Mendez arranged for a day off to be with her 8-year-old twins, Angelica and Marcos, and help hand out art material for a drawing project that coincided with the trout release. Students also played games, went on a nature walk and studied water conditions. Mendez caught the trout-program bug because Angelica would come home and speak so excitedly about it.

``Almost every day she talks about it,'' Mendez said. ``She then draws pictures of fish and now she likes to eat fish.''

``Besides,'' she said, ``this is about science. I like science.''

It's exactly the type of comment that fuels science coordinator Holle's passion to turn on a greater audience with programs like ``Trout in the Classroom.''

Introduced to Southland schools about six years ago by Trout Unlimited and the Southwest Council of the Federation of Fly Fishers, ``Trout in the Classroom'' is based largely on a curriculum developed in 1988 by a substitute science teacher at a Humboldt County elementary school.

Diane Higgins of McKinleyville wanted to teach fishery science to her students in Eureka but was unable to find lesson material. After attending a teacher's workshop dealing with a 1970s British Columbia program of rearing salmon eggs in the classroom, Higgins applied for and received a $12,000 grant to develop a teaching curriculum she called ``California's Salmon and Steelhead: Our Valuable Natural Heritage.''

Higgins said her lessons are now taught across the state and in parts of Oregon and Nevada. Classrooms are provided with refrigerated trout incubators - purchased either by a fishing club or school district. In California, the Department of Fish and Game supplies rainbow trout eggs. Educators receive DFG-approved training to care for the eggs and to assist them with the curriculum.

``It's boomed. It's gone big,'' said Daniel Iwata of Fountain Valley, a member of the Fly Fishers Club of Orange County who was instrumental in ushering ``Trout in the Classroom'' into the region. ``It really gets into the stewardship of nature's resources, and I think that's the important thing.''

And if the program develops new anglers, well, Iwata said, ``That's an extra kudo.''

It already has spawned a few.

``I want to learn how to fish to see how the fishes look when they are adults,'' said Janet Arreguin.

Would you keep them or release them?

``Release them,'' she said.

Why?

``Because they need some home and they need to protect themselves and make more fish, because without them we won't grow much healthier.''

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2 Photos

PHOTO (1--2) Manuel Trujillo, 8, above, left, volunteer John Stevenson and 8-year-olds Angelica Mendez and Dolores Trujillo release rainbow trout fry in Piru Creek. At top, teacher Vicki von Arx checks off trout-habitat requirements as Jessica Lepe, 10, left, and Marshay Derby, 10, help out.

John Lazar/Daily News