Don't Blame The Dog! These Philly Students Ate Their Own School Work
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - As the school year winds down, students at the Philadelphia Performing Arts String Theory School are hitting the home stretch by eating all their hard work throughout the semester, even turning it into a competition.
Sherri Hanna heads the school's STEM majors department. As part of aquaponics education, students were given a real fish to begin the year.
"They have harvested the tilapia they raised all year, they filleted them, and now we're actually eating them," she explains.
The eating part took place Thursday during the "Food Truck Food fight" event.
"And the side dishes are inspired by plants they are growing in the aquaponics system as well," adds Hanna.
9th grader Kylil Turner is part of the "Boys and Gills" team.
"We're preparing tacos," he tells KYW Newsradio. "We raised this fish the whole year. We've been feeding him and now it's time to cook him."
Helping with the cooking for Turner's team was Happy Hour Food Truck chef Ryan Chroust.
"We have two choices of taco shells, either are soft shell corn tortilla or our hard shell. And then we have a nice pickled slaw with some cilantro, cabbage, red onion, fresh jalapeno, fresh lime to garnish it, and that's with the tilapia the kids raised," said Chroust.
"It was messy, stinky," Turner adds, "but in the end we all had fun."
The other team -- "Fish and Chicks" -- made tilapia wraps, some with mango, some barbecue and some buffalo. They were voted the winners by the parents, student and faculty at the event, who also served as judges.
