Teach Youngsters Fishing, A Lifetime Sport - Here's How It Works

An Overview of Fishing

EDITOR'S NOTE: Mountain Brook Junior High Physical Education Teacher John Phillips from Birmingham, Alabama, coaches basketball, cross-country and track and field. Phillips realizes that not all children enjoy traditional school sports. So, with the help of the Fisheries Section of Alabama's Division of Wildlife and Freshwater Fish, he's implemented a fishing curriculum to show his students they can participate in other sports and enjoy them for their lifetimes.

QUESTION: The fishing program at Mountain Brook Junior High lasted two weeks. What did you try to accomplish in the first week?
ANSWER: The program lasted about seven days. We split the curriculum up with another physical education unit we were teaching. The first day was just an introduction to fishing. We talked a little bit about fishing. We went through the first parts of the program. We introduced the children to the resources and what we intended to do over the next few weeks.

QUESTION: What skills did they learn in the first week?
ANSWER: We went over a variety of skills. We had a group come in and teach fly-fishing. We wanted to cover that kind of fishing because many of the kids were interested in that and had friends and family who fly-fished. We did a general overview of rod and reel parts and the different kinds of casts. Also, we went over fish identification and learned the ones unique to Alabama. We showed them pictures and went down to our local creek and identified fish species.

QUESTION: So you took the kids out of class to a creek, correct?
ANSWER: There's a creek not too far from our school. The weather was a little too cold to catch too many different species. We looked at some of the resources that the state department had given us and talked about the fish that were in that creek.

QUESTION: So in other words, you showed the youngsters how to fish close to home?
ANSWER: Yes, I took them to a creek that wasn't too far from many of their houses that contained some of the fish we were identifying as part of the curriculum.

QUESTION: What kind of enthusiasm did the kids have about fishing?
ANSWER: A lot of them had been fishing and enjoyed themselves and, some never had been fishing and hadn't come in contact with the sport. I also integrated other parts of the curriculum as far as science by studying different species. I was able to tie in more than just an outdoors curriculum and by letting them observe some of the subjects that they had been studying about in science class.

To learn more about the Alabama Fishing and Wildlife Curriculum, call Doug Darr in Montgomery, Alabama, at (334) 242 -3884, e-mail him at ddarr@dcnr.state.al.us, or write 64 N. Union St., Montgomery, AL 36130. You also can visit the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resource's Web site at www.dcnr.state.al.us. To learn the particulars about setting up the curriculum, contact John Phillips at Mountain Brook Jr. High (205) 871-3516, or e-mail him at phillipsj@mtnbrook.k12.al.us.

TOMORROW: TEACHING THE SPECIFICS