Industry Insight

Fish In The Classroom

By Bob Vetere
President, APPMA

Bob Vetere

As many of you know, the Pet Care Trust is the education outreach segment of the pet industry. Originally funded by WWPIA, PIDA, H. H. Backer and APPMA, along with a number of contributing companies, it is currently governed by the three trade associations along with an at-large position currently filled by Mark Hagen.

For years the Trust became synonymous with Dr. John Pitts. He helped develop and implement an education program for teachers encouraging them to use pets in their classrooms. By involving the children with pets, important lessons on animal care, responsibility and the like could be easily emphasized. Over the years, Dr. Pitts taught 3,600 teachers, affecting over a quarter of a million children. More important to the industry, the follow-up to this effort showed that 10% of the kids involved either took on their first pet or increased the number of pets they had.

Last year John retired from the Trust. This year the Trust is beginning to implement its Post-John strategic plan. It is still focused on training and education being a critical component of responsible animal care. It also understands the beneficial effect animals can have on children. Such a program helps teach respect for animals as well as promote an attitudinal shift and compassion in the participants.

Studies continue to emphasize the important role animals play in the human health and development cycle and the Trust has designed a program to take advantage of some of these benefits. Through a cooperative effort with several organizations, the Trust will be introducing the Fish in the Classroom (FIC) project. FIC is designed to educate grade school students through learning about fish and how to care for them. At the same time this program will provide value to the industry through increased activity in aquatics.

Based partially on the Florida Aquarium's Aquariumania Outreach Program, FIC will be initially rolled out to train 100 teachers by the end of this year. Over the next three years, the program will be expanded to include an additional five nationally recognized aquariums, grade schools and retailers across the country. To help with implementation a Retailer Mentoring Program is being developed that will be operated on an ongoing basis by the retailers in the communities where the aquariums are located.

The FIC team will also develop a National "Retailer" Fish in the Classroom Program that will help retailers across the country establish their own grassroots based Fish in the Classroom Programs where retailers can support teachers and mentor the program on an ongoing basis.

The FIC Program is building off of the previous work done on behalf of the Trust using other animals. The new program is designed to overcome such barriers as a limited ability of one person to carry the whole program, word-of-mouth enrollment and potential asthma/allergy conflicts.

If the opportunity presents itself in your community, I encourage you to do what you can to help promote FIC. At the end of the day we all win with this joint effort.