Norwalk River is Wilton’s own Living Classroom

Route 7 may be the automotive artery of Wilton, but the river that cuts a swath through town is the true source of Wilton’s environmental  life. Thanks to a longstanding unit for Cider Mill’s third graders to study the Norwalk River that flows just across the street from the school, Wilton’s children are growing up with an understanding of what they stand to lose if they don’t take care of the waterway.

During May each year, Cider Mill third grade classes study the river and its animal and plant life by walking across the street and learning about it firsthand. The children are taught by some of their parents, who volunteer to go through training sessions in order to be able to lead the excursions. 

The curriculum was developed by the five towns that were originally part of the Norwalk River Watershed Association. Wilton and Ridgefield are now the only two remaining towns along the river that still bring students to walk along its banks in order to study the animal and plant life sustained by the waterway.

According to the school’s science instructional leader Kevin Meehan, who oversees the program, it’s important that the parents are involved.

“If I did a parent workshop and said, ‘Come learn about the river and how important it is,’ I would get two people. If I relate it to them being able to teach their children, I’m going to get anywhere from 60-80 people involved. And we have many coming back year after year to do the program," said Meehan.

It’s the parents, said Meehan, who are the best at getting their kids to understand just how crucial protecting the river is to our ecosystem, and he hopes the parents learn the importance too.  

“It’s our hope that our kids become more aware of their natural surroundings and will be advocates for them. We try to get the kids to think that everything’s interrelated. How chemical pesticides affect our waterways; how what happens to one animal affects the rest of the ecosystem," said Meehan.

"We’re not just learning about a rain forest in South America, that they’ll never come in contact with, or the polar region. That’s why we do our forest eco-walk here, because they can relate to that. We try to give science meaningful context so that it has a lasting impression on them—and on the adults as well," he said.

One incredible Norwalk River animal story the children learn is about the migration cycle of the North American eel. Female eels that live in the Great Swamp in Ridgefield travel downriver to the estuary (where the river meets the sea). There they meet the male eels and together they swim to the Sargasso Sea—the section of Atlantic Ocean more commonly known as the “Bermuda Triangle.” That's where the adults lay and fertilize eggs, and then die. But amazingly, the hatchlings migrate back to this region, and find their way back—females swim upriver to Ridgefield, while the males remain in the estuary.

During the lesson, the third graders were spellbound by the mysteries of how this all happens.

“We know more about the moon than we do about the animals that live on our planet. We still can’t explain a lot of things about why the eel is able to do what it does,” said Meehan.

John DiRocco is one parent who has returned more than once to help lead students on the river walk. In between quizzing the kids to see if they're retaining what he’s taught them --“What’s one of the ways the Jack in the pulpit plant attracts bugs? What about skunk cabbage?”—he was just as amazed by what he gets to take away by taking part in the program himself.

“Living in this area, I had no idea about how this river formed, what happens when it floods, the animals that live here, the story of the eel. I’m learning from it. It’s the single class trip that the adults learn the most from," said DiRocco.