DEFOREST, WI (SPECTRUM NEWS) — When Augusto Freitas heard what they were cooking in his family consumer science class at Deforest High School on Tuesday he quickly told his teacher how excited he was.

“I was hyped because today we are preparing tilapia, and that is a main fish dish in brazil, I used to eat every week, I feel nostalgic about it,” Freitas said.

The 11th grader moved from Brazil earlier this year. Tilapia is common there, in Wisconsin it isn't. The fish wasn't exactly caught near the school, but instead raised in it.

The tilapia were part of the agriculture student's aquaponics project. They raised the fish in a tank with floating lettuce plants on the water. As the fish ate and grew their waste fed the lettuce and the lettuce then filtered the water for the fish.

“You're using the waste you don't have to use synthetic fertilizer to increase the nitrogen for the plants, as well as you don't need to do as much water changing if it was just fish, it's a closed cycle,” said Gwen Boettcher, one of Deforest High Schools' Agriculture teachers.

A lot of her students had never heard of aquaponics before taking the class.

“The first response is usually that's really gross, but I have to remind students that your food is grown from lots of manure and fertilizer and things soil naturally has,” Boettcher said.

Boettcher was able to add the program after a referendum a few years ago allowed for an expansion to the schools agriculture department. They added the aquaponics lab.

On Tuesday students cut the lettuce, which was used in the cafeteria for school lunches, and then learned to filet and cook tilapia in Brittany Vanderbilt's family consumer sciences class.

“This is a pretty cool experience for them,” Vanderbilt said. “Usually we get meat from the grocery store and we don't bring in the cow, so this is a different experience.”

Vanderbilt used to go out and catch fish her class would use for this segment, now with the aquaponics program it's a lot easier. However, more than just providing food for the school lunch and the cafeteria, Boettcher said the unit serves another purpose. She wanted students to understand that agriculture can happen at an urban level, especially because a lot of them have never been on a farm.

“Our students sometimes feel really disconnected from that because they're like well I live in an apartment building or I live in town, this was a way to show them you can grow food in any setting, whether it's a basement, a rooftop or in a classroom,” Boettcher said.

Both Boettcher and Vanderbilt recommend the program to any school in the state. So does Freitas.

“It's really cool, I think all schools should do that,” he said.