Collaboration Provides Quality Education

The students at Cedarbrook Adventist Christian School (Hadlock, Wash.) and Poulsbo (Wash.) Adventist School spent two days together this fall studying chum salmon runs on the Olympic Peninsula.

The chum salmon can be identified by the molted dark skin and dark vertical blotches as they return to the rivers to begin spawning in the summer or late fall.

Students visited Greg Reseck's farm and enjoyed playing in the barn, taking hayrides and feeding horses.

During their trip, students also enjoyed a trip to the Quilcene National Fish Hatchery, where they observed the process of taking the fish eggs from the females, the fertilization process and how fish go back into the hatchery tanks.

The students were able to experience fish printing and a salmon dissection with a fish biologist. They learned about how the salmon know which creek to return to based on minerals found in the water in the creek where they were spawned.

Collaboration between these two schools for a fun educational trip allowed students to get to know others from different schools and provided learning opportunities that enhanced the quality of the educational program for both schools.