Essays

Wild on the Prairie: Learning

Can you pass a test for 5th graders on the playas of the Llano Estacado?
November 28, 2007

When the Sibley Nature Center underwent the strategic planning process in 2006, we were encouraged to create a vision statement, as well as a mission statement. Our mission statement reads, “The mission of the Sibley Nature Center is to increase awareness of the natural and historical environment of the Llano Estacado through a broad range of interpretive programs and personal experience.”

Our vision statement reads, “We foresee the day when all school systems, public and private, teach local history and ecology. We foresee the day when everyone in the region knows the common wildflowers, birds, animals, the eight major habitats of the region, and the history of the regional American Indians, and the history of the early Hispanic visitors and the early Anglo settlers.” We believe it is imperative to the mental health of our citizens and vital to the health of our society for everyone to become “connected intellectually and emotionally” to their home bioregion.

What follows is part of what we call “Being a Llanero, 101.” We would like you, the reader, to answer the questions below. The questions are about playas, which are the focus of programs at the Sibley Nature Center during the school year of 2007-2008. All of the answers can be found on our website by utilizing the website search engine that resides in the left column of each page. These questions are designed for 5th graders that visit the Sibley Nature Center to learn about animal behavior and adaptation as required in the TEKS science test (see below), with added questions for the students about our local history.

• 5.9A Comparing adaptive characteristics of species
• 5.9B Analyzing adaptive characteristics that result in an organism’s unique niche
• 5.9C Predicting adaptive characteristics for survival
• 5.10A Identifying traits inherited from parents (physical and behavioral)
• 5.10B Identifying learned traits that result from the influence of the environment

On the About the Center section of the website there is a link to all the essays that illustrate these concepts for students to utilize as well.

1. One of the major habitats of the Llano Estacado is the playas. Playas are places where rainwater collects after a heavy rain. What animal can be found standing and sleeping in playas filled with water during the winter, and why do they do so?
2. What animal can be found breeding in playas filled with water during the summer?
3. What was one of the most important roles of playas for Indians and the Hispanic Ciboleros as they traveled?
4. Where was the Comanche chief Quanah Parker born, according to legend?
5. Name two ways that playas formed.
6. Some of the playas are also known as salt lakes. To the north and east of these larger playas huge dunes of “loess” (silt blown out of the playas). The loess soil is alkaline. What adaptations have occurred in plants to be able to survive in such harsh conditions? (Name one.)
7. Juan Cordona Lake was used by Indians and the Hispanic settlers of northern Mexico for collecting what necessary addition to their diet?
8. What playa was named after an U.S. Army commander serving in West Texas during the 1870s?
9. What does a black necked stilt do when a predator disturbs it at its nest (at the edge of a playa)?
10. How many playas are on the Llano Estacado?
11. What is the hydrological role of a playa? Where does the water in the playa go?
12. What town on the Llano Estacado was purposefully built next to a playa so cattle could have a drink before they were loaded on a train and hauled to the markets of the Eastern United States?
13. Name three plants that usually are only found at playas.
14. What types of butterflies use frogfruit as a larval food source?
15. Name a crustacean that lives in the water of playas. (Their eggs remain in the soil until the playa is filled with water.)
16. What happens to telephone poles and fence posts in the alkaline soil of salt playas?
17. What happens to small animals that are washed into salt playas?
18. What beetle lives along the shores of a playa and what is their behavior?
19. What are the fuzzy white balls on salt bush plants (which are often found near salt playas?)
20. How many species of dragonflies have the Midland Naturalists discovered at playas (and stock tanks) in Midland County?

At Sibley we are proponents of place-based education. The purpose of a place-based curriculum at the elementary school level is to create a clear self-definition for every child. Definition comes by a person learning the relationships that unite him or her to the natural world and the local human adaptations and traditions. It is the deepest roots of patriotism, this knowledge of one's own bioregion -- the physical homeland that surrounds an individual.

We believe everyone should be intimately familiar with his or her environment. A person learns to be proud of their homeland by connecting with its history and the local natural world. We call this “being a LLANERO”, a citizen of our home ecoregion, the Llano Estacado. A Llanero is familiar with the stories, history, and folktales of the Llano Estacado, as well as the natural history. All regional residents should know what Indian tribes lived here, and how they lived, as part of knowing the ecological history of the area. A Llanero also knows the stories of the settlement by people of all cultures.

At present children and adults formulate much of their perception of the world from television. Network television programming, by its very nature, can only present stories that appeal to a common denominator recognizable nationwide (and usually the lowest common denominator!) Curriculum that focuses on the unifying characteristics for state or national identity is an abstract step that should be learned after in-depth familiarity with one's own human and natural environment. Elliot Wigginton, of Foxfire fame, states that place-based education is the best way to "teach about human interdependence, human spirit, and self-reliance."