BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – This is not just a normal classroom at Westdale Middle School.
“This is the aquaponics lab and so we’re growing fish and plants together,” said eighth grader Miles Johnson.
Johnson is one of the almost 90 students who run the district’s only aquaponics lab. He’s learning how to grow fresh produce in nutrient-rich water from catfish rather than soil.
“They get to pick what lettuce they start off with and we start off simple with lettuce and then they get to pick other things to grow,” said aquaponics teacher Dr. Lauraleigh Eddleman.
Eddleman created the program four years ago. She likes to incorporate multiple subjects into her curriculum to help students work through the problems they may face, which is Johnson’s favorite part.
“Taking things that I’ve learned and only learned in classroom settings then being able to apply it in a real-world example,” explained Johnson.
Daniel Whitley with the United States Department of Agriculture said this lab is also a real-world example of the innovative options out there to keep people fed for many years to come.
“We know that there’s a growing population out there and the biggest question is going to be how do we feed them, and these students are learning right now, today, what we’re going to do to solve the problems of tomorrow,” said Whitely.
That’s why Superintendent LaMont Cole is excited to partner with Southern University and Louisiana State University to create more labs like this one throughout the district.
“This is the type of programming we like to expand all across the city of Baton Rouge and the State of Louisiana,” said Cole.
Getting more students excited about careers in agriculture at a younger age.
“It opens the doors to so many careers that they think the stereotype of a scientist is and it’s not, and when they come back the next year and they have all these jobs and plans and careers and they’re just middle schoolers,” said Eddleman.
The district is still deciding which schools will get the curriculum next, but they do plan to expand it to high schools as well.
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