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There's a wonderful reason why Mister Rogers always said aloud he's feeding his fish

Warning: This article is about Fred Rogers and his neighborhood, so there's a 50/50 chance you'll shed a tear.



On Feb. 19, 2023, "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," turned 55 years old. And the internet was feeling feelings over it.

After premiering on Canadian TV in 1963, Fred Rogers' beloved children's program debuted in the U.S. in 1968, inspiring generations of kids across North America to be more thoughtful, kinder neighbors.



One person feeling the feels on the show's anniversary was model, author, and Twitter goddess Chrissy Teigen.

Teigen tweeted the most delightful anecdote about why Rogers would often announce that he was feeding the fish during the show.

"Mister Rogers would narrate himself feeding the fish each episode with, 'I'm feeding the fish,' because of a letter he received from a young blind girl who was worried the fish were hungry," she wrote. "Love you, Mister Rogers."

Aaaaaand I'm crying.


Rogers included the text of the girl's letter in his book, "Dear Mister Rogers, Does It Ever Rain in Your Neighborhood?" published in 1996.

As he noted in the book (emphasis added):

One girl and her family wrote to tell us there was a special reason why she wanted me to talk about feeding the fish each day.

Dear Mister Rogers,

Please say when you are feeding your fish, because I worry about them. I can't see if you are feeding them, so please say you are feeding them out loud.

Katie, age 5 (Father's note: Katie is blind, and she does cry if you don't say that you have fed the fish.)

This downright adorable clip from the series shows Rogers reassuring little Katie that the fish were always well-fed:

Sylvia Earle brought her underwater microphone to Mister Rogers' Neighborhood so children could listen to the fish in the aquarium. When the fish don't make...

"I need to feed the fish right away," Rogers said in the episode, before shaking the container of food above the tank. "I have some friends who get very concerned when I forget the fish during our visits."

Aaaaaand I'm ugly crying.

File:Mister-Rogers-Congress.jpg - Wikimedia Commonscommons.wikimedia.org

Rogers showed us how simple it often is to be a more compassionate friend.

"I just wanted you to know that even if I forget to feed them when we're together, I come back later and feed them, so they're always taken care of," Rogers concluded. "It's good to know that fish and animals and children are taken care of by those who can, isn't it?"

Yes it is, Mister Rogers. The world needs more neighbors like you.


This article originally appeared on 02.20.18

Most Shared

How one teacher's aquarium dream made science at this Texas school 10 times cooler.

He found a beautiful way to make his school a better place to learn.

True
State Farm

What do you do if you're an awesome science teacher and you want your kids to learn about water animals but don't have water nearby?

That's what James Jubran was up against as an aquatic science teacher at Alief Elsik High School in Houston, Texas.

"We don’t have the ability to go to lakes, rivers, oceans or streams," Jubran explains. The nearest large body of water is Trinity Bay, which is an hour away. Big field trips like that cost money, and the school doesn't have the funding to make them feasible.


Elsik is far from being the only school with this problem. Schools nationwide are dealing with massive budget cuts to their STEM programs (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). That's a big obstacle for students looking to have careers in any of these fields.

Thankfully aquatic science enthusiasts at Elsik have Jubran — grant writer extraordinaire.

Jubran with some of his students. All photos via Elsik High School, used with permission.

Jubran grew up in Florida surrounded by the ocean, and he was always fascinated by underwater ecosystems. He often went out on boats with his family, and he never missed an opportunity to go snorkeling or scuba diving.

He became a science teacher in Florida 10 years ago, but due to statewide school budget cuts, he lost his job and decided to move inland to Houston, Texas, in 2006. He's been at Elsik for five years but has always felt somewhat limited by the lack of access to water.

So in 2016, he wrote a grant proposal for State Farm's Neighborhood Assist Program asking for help in building a gigantic aquarium for Elsik students as well as students at other nearby schools.

State Farm accepted the first 2,000 applicants for the grant, and narrowed that number down to 200. Those proposals were then made public so that people could vote on their favorites. Elsik students made it their mission to vote as much as possible.

The top 40 proposals received $25,000. The grant Jubran wrote came in at #8.

State Farm grant dispatchers and members of the school board.

Jubran immediately began pulling resources to build his dream aquarium, and within a couple months, it was finished.

The aquariumis 12 feet long, 9 feet tall, and 3 feet wide and can hold 1,100 gallons of water.

He decided to create a tropical ecosystem in the tank, home to all kinds of tropical fish. The aquatic residents were added slowly to the tank in order to build up good bacteria, which allows the tank to better handle fish waste. The slow process also helps make sure the fish all get along.

Today, there are 14 different species of fish living in the tank. They include threadfin geophagus, known for their digging skills, Silver arowana, which can grow to two feet long, carnivorous tiger oscars, shovelnose catfish, which look like their name sounds, and Redhooks — the vegetarian version of piranhas.

A few redhooks in Elsik's new aquarium.

The tank is located in the school cafeteria so that all of the students can enjoy it and, well, because it was too big to put upstairs near Jubran's classroom.

The aquarium's been in place for two months now, and everyone seems to love it and all its colorful inhabitants.

Threadfin geophaguses hanging out together.

Students are often seen pressed up against the glass watching the fish swim around and interact with one another.

Jubran doesn't love the thousands of fingerprints on the glass, but he appreciates the enthusiasm. He even has kids he's never met before coming up to him saying things like, “oh, are you the guy who built the aquarium? It’s so cool."

I don't know about that guy in the middle. He looks pretty fishy to me. HEYO!

And Jubran's students, especially the ones interested in aquatic science careers, can't get enough. Even though it's the end of the school year, he's begun assigning special teaching projects on species in the aquarium.

"Next year, students will learn everything they need to know about the fish, then develop and present a curriculum focused on the aquarium," Jubran says. That way, when students from other schools come by to check out the aquarium, Elsik students can actually teach them about what's going on inside it.

And Jubran is not finished with his plans to bring water to Elsik — he's got even loftier plans up his sleeve.

Jubran teaching his students about the aquarium.

"I'm going for a $100,000 grant next year to build an even larger salt water aquarium for the other side of the school," Jubran says.

It might be four times as much as the previous grant, but considering his success at getting that, there's a very good chance he'll be filling a larger aquarium with more exotic fish soon enough.

Jubran's initiative just goes to show there's enormous power behind one person's desire to make a difference.

You don't have to have a ton of money or a fancy upbringing to make huge waves in your community. All you need to have is an idea and the tenacity to see it through.

One teacher can make a school a better, cooler place to learn and grow. As long as Jubran's at Elsik, he'll be working on exciting ways to do just that.

If you want to find out more about Neighborhood Assist, and how it's helping improve communities across the country, check out the program here.    

This post was updated 7/11/2017.

We thought the Aral Sea was dead.

Photo from Didier Bizet.

Located between modern-day Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the Aral Sea was once one of the world's largest freshwater lakes.


But starting in the 1960s, the Soviet Union began rerouting rivers away from the sea and into giant agricultural projects. Starved of incoming water, the Aral began to evaporate and disappear, leaving behind briny pools and a ghostly, polluted desert.

By 2007, the lake was just one-tenth of its former size. Former United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called it one of the world's worst environmental disasters.

But now the sea — at least a little part of it — is coming back to life.

In 2005, Kazakhstan built a massive dam, Dike Kokaral, around one of the Aral's few remaining pockets of water, a lake that's come to be known as the North Aral Sea.

Now, rather than disappearing into the vast desert, incoming river water has stayed and pooled. Over time, the water level has risen, and freshwater fish that had been driven off by lower waters and rising salt levels returned.

And with the fish came fishermen.

For two weeks, French photographer Didier Bizet traveled to the North Aral Sea to see how the water's return had affected the region's towns and cities. This is what he saw.

In the morning, fishermen from the town of Tastubek drive out to the (now vastly closer) coast.

Photo from Didier Bizet.

The water used to be about 50 miles (80 km) away, according to Al Jazeera. Now the ride's only about 12 miles (20 km).

A lot of people from the village are fishermen, including 23-year-old Omirserik Ibragimov.

Photo from Didier Bizet.

Ibragimov works with his friend Kanat. The fishermen usually work in pairs and use small, rusty boats.

When he's not working, this fisherman stores his boat's engine in his car. Nobody's likely to steal it, but it's too expensive to risk losing. Photo from Didier Bizet.

Outside the North Aral Sea, the vast majority of the former lake is still desert.

Photo from Didier Bizet.

Local guide Serik Dyussenbayev says this particular patch of land used to be under about four meters (about 13 feet) of water. The ground, contaminated with Soviet-era pesticides, is dotted with thousands of sea shells.

Skeletal boats still dot the area.

This ship lies about 30 kilometers from Tastubek. There used to be more, but they were cut up for scrap. Photo from Didier Bizet.

But the fish prove that, at least in the North Aral, the dam is working.

In Tastubek, fish are sorted, washed, and frozen. Photo from Didier Bizet.

Factories in Tastubek and the nearby city of Aralsk sort, clean, and freeze the fish, which are then shipped all over the region, even into Russia and Uzbekistan.

Photo from Didier Bizet.

In Aralsk, fish shops have returned.

Photo from Didier Bizet.

The shops in Aralsk offer catfish, perch, pike perch, bream, snakehead, and three different kinds of carp.

Decorations at the Rara café hint at how close the water used to be to Aralsk — and maybe how close it could be again.

Photo from Didier Bizet.

A second phase of the dam project could raise waters even more, bringing the sea to Aralsk and other former ports again.

The Aral Sea is still one of the world's greatest environmental disasters. We shouldn't ignore that, but recovery is possible.

It's important to understand that the North Aral Sea is only a small part of the former lake and just returning the water won't solve every problem. Any long-lasting recovery could take decades.

Here, things are starting to look good again.

The fishermen head home at the end of the day. Photo from Didier Bizet.

For one week each year, teacher Zach Carey turns his eighth-grade classroom into a working biology lab.

Students at Commodore John Rogers School in Baltimore, Maryland, walk into class on a Monday and find their room transformed. Two high-powered microscopes sit at the back of the class, and each group of desks is topped with a transparent tank occupied by two small, delicate fish: one male, one female.

For the next week, these kids will be scientists, and the fish are going to help them.


A third-grader at another nearby Baltimore school, Thomas Jefferson Elementary. Image from David Schmelick and Deirdre Hammer/Johns Hopkins University.

This week of hands-on science is thanks to a group called BioEYES, a nonprofit that uses zebrafish to give kids real experience as scientists.

Zebrafish are small, striped, guppy-like fish and are often used in science experiments. The idea behind BioEYES is to have the two adult fish breed, then let the kids work as scientists and watch the embryos develop.

Adult zebrafish. Image from David Schmelick and Deirdre Hammer/Johns Hopkins University.

When you tell kids they're going to be breeding actual live fish in a middle-school classroom, some seem amazed, but others are pretty skeptical, says Carey. So you can imagine the excitement on that Monday morning — excitement Carey quickly transforms into rapt attention.

"The kids are super engaged," Carey says. "They want to know what's going on."

The students' engagement is important because science education is in trouble.

While America was known for its science and technology throughout the 20th century, today the nation is falling behind in terms of producing new scientists, mathematicians, and engineers. There have been many reports over the last few decades calling for major changes in how we're teaching our kids.

BioEYES is out to help fill that gap by giving kids the opportunity to do hands-on science. Furthermore, while the program could technically be used anywhere, they've made it free for schools where kids are low-income and struggling with science.

The program started back in 2002 with just two just people, Steven Farber and Jamie Shuda.

Back then, Farber was just setting up his own professional zebrafish lab when he got a surprise visit from a "take your kids to work day" group. Farber welcomed the kids, showing them around and letting them look at tiny, developing zebrafish under a microscope.

Photo from BioEYES, used with permission.

The kids were enchanted, and Farber found himself hosting more of these visits. Excited, but overwhelmed, Farber brought on Shuda, a former third-grade teacher and educator to help turn it into a program.

As they were talking, Farber and Shuda discovered they were both frustrated with the stereotypical image of a scientist as some old dude in a lab coat — something a lot of middle-school kids could not picture in their future. So they decided that, instead of just bringing a scientist into the classroom, their program would turn kids into the scientists themselves.

"Giving people the opportunity to do something they wouldn't normally do really opens their eyes," says Shuda. Stereotypes break down. Doors open.

Today, the BioEYES program is in more than 100 schools in the U.S. and reaches kids from second grade through high school.

Photo from BioEYES, used with permission.

The program can be tailored for each class. Carey's kids, for instance, are learning about genetics.

In Carey's class, the kids get two parent fish — one with the zebrafish species' typical silver and grey stripes and the other a colorless albino. Their question is what color will their offspring be.

For five days, the kids make hypotheses, observe the babies develop, and care for the growing embryos as if they were in a working laboratory. They can use the microscopes to watch the eggs grow from single cell to embryo to larvae. By the end of the week, the larvae are big enough that the kids can see their coloration — and find out if their hypotheses were correct.

"What makes this a really fantastic model for teaching genetics is that the kids are actually able to, with a living organism, answer a hypothesis," Carey says. He thinks a lot of science teaching is purely didactic — look at this cell, label these organs, memorize these names. But BioEYES feels like an investigation in a real laboratory.

Photo from BioEYES, used with permission.

The first few years Carey did this, the program was actually run by one of the BioEYES outreach educators. Today, though, he's taken the program and made it his own. He's one of what BioEYES calls their model teachers. They use the BioEYES model and materials but tailor it to better fit their own schedules and classrooms.

"They're the key to our success," Shuda said.

The program seems to be working and has actually launched a few science careers.

Students at Thomas Jefferson Elementary School. Image from David Schmelick and Deirdre Hammer/Johns Hopkins University.

A recent paper found that BioEYES improved test scores compared to pre-fish levels while also helping kids understand what being a scientist was actually like. Some past students have even gone on to pursue STEM careers themselves.

Fabliha Khurshan, a 21-year-old senior at the University of Pennsylvania, says she was always interested in medicine, but the program helped her understand what being in a lab was really like. Kareema Dixon, a 19-year-old sophomore engineering major at Drexel University, says, "Before BioEYES, I wanted to be a lawyer."

Both credit the program with pushing them toward science.

It's cool to see a program like this that both teaches and inspires kids.

"It’s something that really leaves a lasting mark," Carey says.