You won’t believe what our students are up to! The Fort Worth After School students at Dunbar Middle School are bringing farming home by learning to grow fish and vegetables in their own backyard through Aquaponics. The Student Aquaponics Team at Dunbar Middle School is the first school in Texas that is approaching food and nutrition in this way.
Join us for our Family Day! It will be held Saturday, February 4 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Frank’s Fish Farm, 142 CR 4463, Decatur, TX, 76234. Enjoy food and fun while we show you how we’re doing what comes naturally!
Aquaponics is the method of growing crops and fish together in a re-circulating system. Fish (such as tilapia) are grown in large tanks. The water from their tanks circulates through an irrigation system that our students build to nourish plants and vegetables (we are currently growing Bibb lettuce). Leaves from these plants and veggies can be used to feed the fish. It is just one gigantic green circle that means healthier living for you.
Through a partnership with Frank’s Fish Farm in Decatur, our students are becoming explorers – discovering how the environment affects our food and water; scientific Investigators - conducting a water study and a soil study to determine how organisms and populations in an ecosystem depend on and may compete for their own survival needs such as oxygen, quantity of light, water, range of temperatures, or soil composition; and self reliant engineers – putting to task what they have learned by building their own irrigation system and installing a garden utilizing their water system at DMS.
This project will end with a graduation ceremony for the students on the team declaring that they are “Aquaponic Certified.” Students and their parents will also be treated to a college trip to visit the Agriculture center at Texas A&M in College Station and the Aquaponic Garden at Prairie View A&M in Prairie View, TX. We hope that from this project students will want to explore careers in Marine Biology, Agriculture, Oceanography, Aquatic Science and many other lesser known but demanding and lucrative careers.