Badlands Residency Day 4
Monday November 5
My first day of teaching at Red Cloud High School went very well. The students were attentive during my talk and most were focused as they worked on the drawing phase of their paintings. I am teaching watercolor landscape painting to all the art students at Red Cloud, about sixty kids. There are five classes: three are fairly large with 18 students while the two classes of seniors are small, just four and five students in each. I am having the larger classes work from their choice of three photographs from the Stonghold and Palmer Creek Units of the park. These are the areas that will become the first Tribal National Park. I showed the students on a map where each of the photographs were taken, and gave some basic drawing and painting instruction to get them started. While I loitered about, ready for any questions, the students mostly just did their thing, not needing me or at least not asking for anything,.
My first day of teaching at Red Cloud High School went very well. The students were attentive during my talk and most were focused as they worked on the drawing phase of their paintings. I am teaching watercolor landscape painting to all the art students at Red Cloud, about sixty kids. There are five classes: three are fairly large with 18 students while the two classes of seniors are small, just four and five students in each. I am having the larger classes work from their choice of three photographs from the Stonghold and Palmer Creek Units of the park. These are the areas that will become the first Tribal National Park. I showed the students on a map where each of the photographs were taken, and gave some basic drawing and painting instruction to get them started. While I loitered about, ready for any questions, the students mostly just did their thing, not needing me or at least not asking for anything,.
Another part of the day was attending meetings during the free period and lunch hour at school. I drove down today with Julie, the education specialist for Badlands. The park superintendent and head of the interpretive division both came down as well for part of the day. We met with several key people at the school to discuss the idea of summer internships at the park for students as well as building ties with programs and projects that bring the school and park together. It is fascinating to get to be a part of this discussion. The park people also sat in for some of my lessons with the kids. Some photos were taken and posted to the park's facebook and twitter pages.
An interesting and somewhat exhausting side effect of teaching at Red Cloud while living in ranger housing at Badlands is the commute. It takes just under two hours to drive to Pine Ridge, where Red Cloud is located. Today I was up by 4:30am and on the road at 5:45, well before sunrise. Lots of wildlife on the remote drive. Deer, turkeys, horses were all to be found milling about the road. There was a fair bit of fog as well this morning, which was just gorgeous as the sun came up and some of the more jagged landforms poked through the mist, amongst the rolling grassy hills. When I got back to the housing area at 5:30pm, the sun had already set. Makes for an interesting day, leaving before dawn, returning after dusk.
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| sunset from the quad - town of interior in the distance |