How To FAIL BIG and Come Out PIRATE

This is my second year having the privilege of teaching the APES course at our school.  No I don't teach primates (even though some days it might feel like it). When I took over the AP Environmental Science course I inherited a 60 gallon river flow tank that came with the course/classroom.  As a child we had a few fish tanks at home, but nothing that I ever had the responsibility of taking care of.  That was dad's job.  I only picked out the fish.  Last school year students set up the tank to earn project point hours and we got to the point of adding plants, but we never added critters. I wasn't sure what to put in there. I referred to YouTube and the manufacturer's website but I never felt comfortable moving forward.  I also wasn't sure what the legalities were of putting native WI critters in the tank and I wasn't confident in selecting anything from a pet store.

With student encouragement this year, I decided to move forward and add critters.  I spent a lot of time visiting various pet stores asking what seemed like a million questions before I had the confidence to add the critters to the tank.  One can only visit three different pet stores so many times before pulling the plug.  To be honest, what held me back was a fear of failing in front of my students.  What I wasn't expecting was this whole endeavor to become a rescue mission and to end PIRATE.  Within minutes of putting the critters in the tank on a Saturday night (I was hoping to surprise students on Monday), we already had to rescue the Molly that got hung up in a plant in between water basins.  You can see the black blob stuck in the plant (picture to the left-middle of the tank).  Yup!  That's Molly.


I was curious as to how things were going in the tank so I decided to stop in Sunday night to check.  What I wasn't expecting was a critter rescue.  It turns out that little fish don't like swimming against the river flow current for very long.  They were exhibiting signs of stress.  The tetra couldn't handle the current and got stuck in the filter.  While I was working on cleaning out the filter, one of the frogs slipped between the glass of the back of the tank and the plastic rock that lined the back.  That was the point in which this became a full out critter rescue.

My instantaneous reaction was that I had to SAVE THE FROG.  I immediately started pulling back the plastic, sacrificing the aesthetics of the tank to get the frog out that got hung up behind.  What I didn't realize was that plastic gets sharp when you pull it off and I had cuts and was bleeding all over my hand.  I was able to rescue the frog and the other critters in the tank. I also was able to create a scrapbook of the rescue in progress.  How was I ever going to explain what happened to my students?

My mission consisted of taking everyone home, picking up 8 gallons of distilled water, and quickly setting up a never been used tank that I had in storage.  I tried all that I could to rescue the already stressed fish and frogs and I was able to save a few in the process.  During this three hour Sunday night rescue (time that was already reserved for grading) I was worried about how I was going to explain this to my students.  A crime scene hook seemed like the best way out of this mess.

My second period class had no reaction to the tank set up disaster.  They weren't closely associated with the project and thought it was a Halloween Decoration.  My third and fourth period classes that had the students that initially set up the tank, had a bit more of a reaction.  I didn't realize how stressful it was to have critters and to have the whole situation fail.  We have since decided to take out all of the plastic, clean up the 6 year old algae, and turn the tank into an entirely aquatic ecosystem.  Students have already begun the excavation and planning for phase 2 of the project.


I am very thankful that I discovered this mess Sunday night.  It allowed me to PIRATE up my lesson the next day.  I can't imagine the stress I would have experienced Monday morning if I hadn't stopped in!  What a failure turned learning experience!