Eels and Grasses Provide Living Education

Diane Velozo is enthusiastic about her commitment to the environment. While she practices her own green activities at home, her real joy comes from sharing her passion each day with the two dozen first-graders in her class at Cape St. Claire Elementary School.

As one of the school’s coordinators for Chesapeake Connections—the environmental education program run by Arlington Echo for Anne Arundel County Public Schools—Velozo has helped bring several projects to the school to teach students how to improve the future of the Chesapeake Bay.

Specially certified by Arlington Echo to manage several types of Bay restoration projects, Velozo has worked previously with other county schools in coordinating similar projects. “Ideally, every child in Anne Arundel County Schools will participate in a Chesapeake Connections program to become Chesapeake Stewards,” she says.

Thanks to in-class projects that Velozo and several Cape St. Claire Elementary colleagues are folding into their curriculum, children in these classes have the opportunity to gain hands-on knowledge in understanding the importance of the local ecological system.

Velozo’s class is currently raising two American eels that she received much smaller from Arlington Echo a few weeks ago. Her students enjoy taking care of them and watching their daily growth, both of which provide a backdrop for Velozo to educate her students about the eels’ place in the Bay’s food chain and their overall importance to the water’s health.

Velozo explains that the two eels are presently in the third stage of their life cycle, called elvers. They will soon have new neighbors when 10 glass eels arrive, also to be raised by Velozo’s students.

“The glass eels are very young and are named that because they are so transparent, you can see their intestines,” says Velozo. “Of course, the children love that because they’re even more interesting but we have to keep them in a separate tank from the elvers otherwise the glass eels would get eaten.”

Meanwhile, a number of third and fifth grade students have been busy with their Chesapeake Connections project of raising bay grasses. Teri Cramer, who teaches fifth grade at Cape St. Claire Elementary, and third grade teachers Melissa Cressman and Debbie Yates have portioned off areas of their classrooms to allow room for large tanks to grow red head grass.

Cressman says their students are learning this native grass is vital in providing shelter, oxygen, nutrients and erosion and wave control for the Bay. “We have large tanks with filter systems to grow the grasses from cuttings to maturity, which takes about 12 to 16 weeks,” she reports.

On May 18, Cramer, Cressman and Yates will accompany their students to plant the grasses during a class trip to Cape St. Claire’s main beach. Accompanying them will be Velozo’s first grade class, who will be wishing their eels a fond farewell.

Velozo is happy that students at the school are learning and participating in so many proactive Bay restoration projects at a time when the water’s health remains tremendously endangered.

“We have a huge number of green initiatives going on at the school, from raising terrapins, eels and bay grasses, selling rain barrels, the Walk-to-School days, and now we even have a 95% recycling rate,” says Velozo. “We live right on this important estuary, so the health of the Bay is good for everybody.”