The Beginning
Award-winning Seattle filmmaker, Mark Titus was invited to a classroom as part of a "learning journey" the kids were doing as part of their STEM curriculum during their land forms section.
Mark was kind enough to agree to come and he showed the children a 5-min clip of his film The Breach to teach them the importance of Salmon:
Many of the children didn't know anything about the last fully-intact wild salmon run on Earth in Bristol Bay, Alaska or the threat they currently face – a massive open-pit copper mine being pushed toward construction in the headwaters of Bristol Bay.
They didn't realize that wild salmon feed 137 other creatures including us.
After they watched the clip they did an art project created by mom blogger, Rae Ann Kelly that involved making salmon hats out of paper with watercolors.
They then had the opportunity to have a Q & A session with the Director and we were all surprised by the sophisticated questions they asked like, “How can I be an activist if I’m only a kid?”; “I studied a lot about copper and I know it has to do with heating so what is more important heating or salmon?”; “Should I stop eating salmon?”; “Is there anything I can do?”; “What's the difference between farmed salmon and wild salmon?”; “Doesn't farmed salmon have bugs and pesticides in it?” ; and finally, “I want to help and we should have a march!”
Then the kids got excited to participate in some way and asked the filmmaker to join them in this effort. Moved by the children's passion, he agreed.
They decided to go to King 5 to gain some support with an effort they would like to achieve.
They created School of Salmon to try to reach other kids across the country to teach them about the importance of salmon as well as the looming Pebble Mine project in Bristol Bay.
Their goal is to get the message out and challenge kids at other schools in hopes it will go across the country and back to where it started just like a salmon run.
What they hope to have is a place where they can share menu ideas, crafts like the salmon hats, the movie clip, and most recently they decided they want a place where the kids can talk to each other much like a Q & A section.
Mark has even offered to visit schools during the film's national tour to help the kids spread their message.