9 minute read
Pedagogy for the Back Forty
Article and photo by DALE ROLLINS, Ph.D.
Pedagogy is a term you don’t hear very often on the back forty. It’s defined as “the method and practice of teaching, especially as an academic subject or theoretical concept.”
Having just retired from AgriLife Extension after a 33-year career as a wildlife specialist, I had plenty of opportunities to see pedagogy up close and personal. While I never had any formal training on the subject, I was blessed to experience some great teachers in my nine years of college and even more through the years.
And let me include a “thank you” to various administrators for putting up with my unorthodox teaching styles. I thoroughly enjoyed my career and am confident that my love and passion for my subjects were obvious to my audiences.
Now as I dissect some of the essential elements of being a successful teacher, I offer the following as common denominators: 1. Show your passion. Does anyone in TWA question the passion of folks like Dr. Bill Eikenhorst, Greg Simons and many others in TWA leadership positions? When one’s passion shines like a diamond, how can you not be impressed? I’m known mostly as a “quail man,” not that I don’t like waterfowl or whitetails. At an awards ceremony one time in Austin, the person introducing me opined, “I’m pretty certain that no one has ever uttered the word ‘quail’ as much as Dale Rollins.” 2. Toastmasters. I always encourage my grad students and others to visit a meeting of Toastmasters International. Toastmasters is a user-friendly setting to enhance one’s speaking, listening and communication skills—it surely helped mine. And to this day I still remember Dr. Deke Johnson challenging us with: “Opportunity knocks…who will answer?” I can typically sniff out Toastmasters by the way they conduct themselves at the lectern. 3. Quote me. I’m a confessed quoteaholic. It’s been said that a quotation at the right time is like life bread to the famished. I can cite folks like Aldo Leopold, Will Rogers and Winston Churchill about as well as anyone. Their wisdom takes on a timeless character to so many of the issues we face today. When I conceived the Bobwhite Brigade back in 1993, I wanted to include inspirational quotations like those that adorned the walls of my FFA classroom back in Hollis, Oklahoma. I can still recite most of them 50 years later. Since then, “Silver Bullets” have taken a life of their own in Brigades-ese.
4. The power of proverbs. One of those quotable quotes is the Chinese proverb: “Tell me, and I forget; show me, and I remember; involve me, and I understand.” This sage sound bite serves as our motto in Texas Brigades as it underscores our teaching style. 5. Child’s play. Many of the exercises we use in the Bobwhite Brigade for teenagers also have a place in my teaching repertoire for adults. Accordingly, the QuailMasters class curriculum relies heavily upon teaching methods perfected on teenagers. Exercises like “Run for Your Life,” “The Mortality Mile,” and the “Softball Habitat Evaluation Technique” (SHET) may have roots on the playground, but they are easily adapted (and received) on the back forty. Using “Walk for Your Life” for adults shows them how excessive brush control can leave quail vulnerable to their predators. And when a ranch hand came up to me after the conclusion of a SHET demonstration he made my day when he said, “I never really understood what the boss (an absentee landowner interested in wildlife) wanted when it comes to brush control… but now I do.” I regale that quote as acknowledgment that SHET has the “cowboy seal of approval.” 6. Metaphors. I use metaphors a lot in my teachings and writings. Two that come to mind include “In Search of Purple Worms” and “Quail Melt.” In the former, I argue that one’s lease-hunting enterprise is somewhat like bass fishing with a purple plastic worm, arguably the most popular lure for bass fishing from the 1970s through the 1990s. If your neighbor is garnering more income than you, it could be because he knows how to rig and work the lure more effectively than you do. The latter (“Quail Melt”) involves the audience holding an ice cube in their hand and observing what happens; it melts! As managers we can’t keep it from melting, but we can slow the rate of melt, which is confirmed when we follow up with “The Mortality Mile.” 7. Appreciate this! I made a career out of “appreciating” things. Some were pariahs (Predator Appreciation Days) while others were easily comprehended (Quail Appreciation Days). The list of “Appreciation Days” includes (in order of date) predators, quail, deer, doves, wild turkeys, brush, feral hogs and fire. I used a play on words, using the various contexts of the term “appreciate” to examine the good, bad and ugly of a particular species. Various contexts of “appreciate” included “to value or admire highly,” “to judge with heightened awareness” and “to be cautiously or sensitively aware of.” What a great blueprint for pedagogy and prickly pear. 8. Sound off! I’m not a veteran, but I’ve always liked cadences. They found their way into the curriculum of the Bobwhite Brigade in 1994 courtesy of “Mean Gene the Bobwhite Marine” Miller, a proud Marine. Since then, “conservation cadences” have become standard issue for Brigaders and QuailMasters. Some of my favorite memories will always be of Bobwhite Brigaders marching and calling cadences. One could often observe a tear swelling in an old veteran’s eyes. 9. A sales gimmick. Most salesmen seek a gimmick to hook their audience’s attention; I was no different. My gimmick was my bird calls. When I sounded off with the Mockingbird’s trill then followed with the “poor-bob-white!” I gained instant credibility with my audience. It’s a skill that I honed over thousands of hours of practice and an unusual way that I learned to whistle (through my teeth rather than in the traditional method). Destiny perhaps.
I acknowledge my boss of many years Dr. Don Steinbach for providing his flexibility in allowing me to stray from strict pedological principles with some unorthodox methodology and to my colleague Dr. Billy Higginbotham for always setting a stiff pace. And to the hundreds of you whose name is not followed by “Ph.D.” but whose teachings found a fertile seedbed with me.
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Cardinal Feather
(Acalypha radians)
Article by BRAD KUBECKA
Photo by Brad Kubecka
Distribution of cardinal feather in Texas.
After living and traveling across the southeastern states, I’ve come to find that conversation about weather isn’t just small talk in Texas especially in the wildlife community. Wildlife populations literally live and die by fluctuation in weather conditions.
Spring and summer temperature and rainfall are critically important for the growth of highly nutritious annual forbs which many species rely on in one way or another. Not surprisingly, studies have repeatedly shown that the composition of forbs in the summer diets of white-tailed deer is lower in years with dry, warm conditions leading to poor nutrition for does and fawns.
Cardinal feather (Acalypha radians) is a drought-tolerant perennial forb endemic to Texas. In other words, it’s only found here in the Lone Star State and can provide forage for wildlife in both good years and bad. In the summer of 1965, a relatively dry summer, biologists characterized the diet of deer on the Welder Wildlife Refuge and found cardinal feather in more than half of the deer on sandy soils.
Male cardinal feather; note the sandy soil.
Photo by Brad Kubecka
In a study of quail diets in Maverick and Kinney counties, cardinal feather seeds were found in 17 percent of Scaled Quail and 11 percent of Bobwhite Quail diets. Common ground doves, wild turkeys and pocket gophers have also been documented eating the seeds or vegetation.
Given its distribution in the southern part of the state, the blooming period is long and occurs from April to November. Male and female reproductive parts are found on different plants, a phenomenon called dioecy.
Male flowers are clustered and found at terminal ends of stems in a spike inflorescence. Dark red styles are prominent from the female flower and resemble the feathers of a northern cardinal. Styles are structures that carry pollen from the stigma, which receives pollen, to the plant’s ovary.
Both male and female reproductive parts of cardinal feather lack petals. Cardinal feather’s colloquial name Yerba de la Rabia, translating to “plant of rage,” is ironic given its petite growth, delicate female flowers and much less intimidating English common name.
Cardinal feather is covered in soft hairs that look similar to those on Texas bullnettle, but the hairs on cardinal feather do not irritate skin. Both of these species are members of the family Euphorbiaceae which includes milkweeds. Another exception to a rule, cardinal feather does not have a milky latex as do many other Euphorbs.
Keep an eye out for this small forb, delicate and unique, on your next outdoors excursion.
Female cardinal feather plants have red styles that resemble bird feathers.
Cardinal feather grows best in full sun on well-drained sandy or gravely soils in south-central Texas, rarely exceeding 16 inches in height. Accordingly, biologists considered it the fifth most preferred forb on sandy soils during their study, but it was much less prevalent in deer foraging on clay soils.
Seeds of cardinal feather. Photo from Texas Bobwhites, Larsen et al. 2010
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