Teaching with fishing earns entry to the Illinois Outdoor Hall of Fame

“Fishing Trainer” Eileen Rice took her classroom outdoors and into the Illinois Outside Corridor of Fame.

“My husband Bob stated, `Why don’t you’re taking your children fishing? and I stated, `Properly, do you assume my principal will permit me to take first graders out and have them swing hooks round?’ “ Rice recalled. “I’ve been fortunate, all my principals and superintendents have full-hearted assist for this program.”

As a first-grade trainer (and a pair years with second graders) for greater than 30 years, Rice constructed a unit round fishing that culminates with a fishing journey.

Rice is a part of an all Chicago-area threesome who shall be inducted April sixth in the course of the Illinois Conservation Basis’s HOF gala.

Additionally being inducted are Nan Buckardt, director of training for the Lake County Forest Preserves, and Doug Aller, of New Idea Profit Group, which hosts such occasions because the No Baby Left Indoors/Household Outside Day at William W. Powers State Recreation Space.

Rice’s unit started in her last two years at now-closed St. Gregory on the North Facet, culminating with fishing at Axehead Lake. Within the mid-Nineteen Nineties, she took it to B.J. Hooper Elementary in Lindenhurst, culminating with fishing at Sterling Lake.

That scene surprised once I first witnessed it 1997.

“That’s the place I we had the large group,” Rice stated. “No person forgets that: bus after bus, 350 children and one other 200 adults.”

What most struck me, as a brand new father and husband, was how the blokes seemed snug. So typically guys, not less than this man, really feel like a largemouth bass in a goldfish bowl in school occasions.

“It’s the one journey we get a lot of dads or uncles or grandpas include us,” Rice stated. “Spotlight for me is that it helped me make that connection.”

For the final 25 years, she has been at East Prairie College in Skokie, which matches by means of eighth grade.

“Nice half is seeing my little first graders develop up and graduate,” Rice stated. “Yearly the No. 1 reminiscence of graduating children is of the first-grade fishing journey. It’s superior. Even seven years later, that’s such a robust reminiscence for them.”

The fishing day is often held at Skokie Lagoons, Excessive water as soon as compelled a transfer to Axehead.

To start with, the unit was informally often called “Fish, Fishing and Setting.” It covers a spread of topics from writing to biology to math.

“Kids are studying essentially the most quantity of data than in another grade,” Rice identified enthusiastically. “The knowledge they be taught in first grade is about 80 % new info. So many alternatives to see these gentle bulbs go off. So many alternatives to see them shine, it’s so thrilling.”

Rice had function fashions of academics in grammar and highschool (St. Benedict’s).

“The instructing bug bit me once I was instructing ballet,” Rice stated. “I made a decision once I wasn’t going to advance in ballet to enter instructing. I nonetheless love ballet. My one buddy in faculty known as me the “Fishing Ballerina.” Now I’m being known as the “Fishing Trainer.” My poor mother would say, `You might be within the sports activities web page once more for fishing.” She might be rolling over in her grave.’ “

The Illinois Outside Corridor of Fame 2023 Gala is at Abbington Banquets in Glen Ellyn. Particulars are at ilconservation.org/Occasions/Gala.

“It’s nothing I ever anticipated in my lifetime, I used to be simply taking my children fishing,” Rice stated. “That was my primary aim: to reveal them to the outside. I by no means in my wildest goals noticed this.”