Port O’Connor school children were fortunate to have Dr. Craig Wilson visit their school recently. Dr. Wilson is a Director- USDA/HSINP Future Scientists Project and a Senior Research Associate at the College of Science, Texas A&M University. He did some outstanding experiments with the students and greatly inspired them. Dr. Wilson wrote the following after his visit:
Any port in a storm…That might be true were a hurricane forming in the Caribbean and if I were all at sea literally rather than figuratively but such was not the case. I was invited to be a guest presenter at a Texas Farm Bureau (TXFB) one-day summer workshop in Port Lavaca, Texas. For some reason that name rang a bell. I remembered having a student 26 years ago who had talked of spending the summers shrimping with his grandfather in The Gulf of Mexico. Obviously, I did an Internet search and turned up my former student, now the owner of an eco-tourism business, but located in Port O’Connor and not Lavaca. A few accompanying photographs confirmed that this was one and the same student I had taught, so long ago.
By coincidence, a few months after the workshop, I was invited by one of the workshop teachers to drop by her school, Port O’Connor Elementary would you believe? I happened to be heading south to The Rio Grande Valley and so, detoured and lo and behold, I found myself pulling into a business just around the corner from the school. I parked. I walked towards who I assumed to be my former student but unrecognizable to me, his face hidden beneath a baseball cap and full beard and glasses, his forearms bronzed and well developed, presumably from paddling the newly opened ‘Port O’Connor Paddling Trail’ that he has helped to develop.
Luckily, he recognized me and the years fell away as we sat and reminisced while looking forward as to what his future might hold, all this under a clear blue sky in the pristine gulf air. He may finally publish, and have illustrated by another of my former students, his sci-fi novels that had been his passion way back when and still are. Another coincidence, I believe he has occasionally been a substitute at the school. A Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) hovers over milkweed planted by his sister in a pollinator garden. Is this again a coincidence? The Monarch stays. I depart.
I turn the corner and there is a sign spelled out in bold black letters in front of the school, “WELCOME, DR. WILSON”. I find the office and am, indeed, well welcomed by The Principal. I set up in the main hall. I present to about 43 Kindergarten, 1st and 2nd grade students, seated in three rows on the old wooden planked floor. The hour flies by. They are attentive, eager and a delight to teach. They do not disappoint. When I give each a color card and ask them to find a color match with anything outdoors, they embrace the task and find all manner of artifacts both natural and man-made. One girl points to the sky, a perfect match today for her pale blue color card. Such creativity cannot and shouldn’t be tested. They leave reluctantly.
The 3rd, 4th and 5th graders file in, maybe 45 of them. I believe the school totals 90 students. These students too, make this a special day. Such schools are special. They are hanging on with dwindling populations as small towns shrink and change. But, they define what is great about small town America. The children are cherished. All children have identities but here those identities are recognized because less means more. The teacher has more time. There is less room for individual children to fall between the cracks and society is definitely cracking, a storm brewing.
I often pass abandoned school buildings on my travels. I am saddened by their loss. Society is the lesser because of it. Britain was swept up in the economies of scale adopted and adapted from the American Educational System where bigger was thought to be better. I am of the old school. My grammar school (grades 5-12) totaled 800 boys and that seemed just right neither too large nor too small just missing girls to provide balance.
If you want to experience the best education has to offer don’t just pull into any port, try Port O’Connor Elementary School…
Avery Gosnell learns about dung beetles.
Ollie Busby holds a buffalo patty.
Jackie Gutierrez and Alex Lopez learn about energy.
