Students get hands-on conservation experience
Jun. 21—Led by Evelyn Guerrero and Jaxon McAndrew, the 2024 Conservation Job Corps program at the I-20 Wildlife Preserve is a chance for high school students to get hands-on experience in conservation, restoration, education and research before heading to college.
The program runs the entire month of June. It blends life skills lessons, such as learning to use tools, with classroom instruction and hands-on exploration and observation. Students will work on the preserve and take a series of field trips across the state, a news release said.
Accepted into the class were Young Women's Leadership Academy students Marina Garcia, Allison Grant, Casey Hoang and Naylenie Gutierrez Parra; Legacy High School student Raheem Mohamed; and Midland High School students Eliana Aguila, Camille Neff and Kevin Vergara.
A University of Texas Permian Basin senior, Guerrero is the intern education coordinator for the I-20 Wildlife Preserve, as well as a staff leader for the Job Corps this June.
McAndrew is the conservation land manager at the I-20 Wildlife Preserve and one of the staff student leaders.
McAndrew said they chose students from Midland High School, Legacy High School and the Young Women's Leadership Academy.
"We have a good group of those three schools," he said.
Most of the time, the students' day starts at 7:30 a.m. at the preserve doing an outdoor activity or working on a conservation project.
"Then at 11:30, we break and we go to the library or Midland Shared Spaces office to do a planned curriculum that me and Evelyn have prepared. Today's curriculum is going to be identifying all these plants and trees that the students observed today and we're going to press those flowers," McAndrew said.
"When we're not doing the day-to-day routine, we do visit multiple different organizations throughout the program all centered around conservation," he added.
They visited Borderlands Research Institute, the Marathon Grasslands Preserve that was protected by the Nature Conservancy, and also visited a former employee of the preserve, Emmy Ulmschneider, who lives sustainably in Midland.
"This week we're going to be visiting Texas A&M Forest Service. We're going to visit with the Caprock Task Force, a part of it who do a lot of wildfire management around the Panhandle and throughout Texas. They've even outsourced work to California to fight those fires and I'm sure they're shooting people to New Mexico," McAndrew said.
"They will meet with them, see their big machinery, their fire resistant bulldozers, their road graders and whatnot; ask them how they've got to that spot in life. We're also going to visit a tree farm where they grow a lot of native trees, as well as the trees for windbreaks in the area. That kind of brings me to like the whole mission of this program is to showcase these students different job opportunities and examples of conservation," he added.
One of the main questions they ask everyone they visit is how did they get where they are.
"There's a lot of different avenues that you can end up in the same spot," McAndrew said.
Guerrero plans to graduate from University of Texas Permian Basin in May and McAndrew has an associate degree in business and management from Midland College.
"I got here through volunteer work before college and now in college I conduct a pollination network research project out here. That's how I really got involved with the people who managed the preserve and ended up working here," she added.
McAndrew started volunteering at the preserve to get hours for his Legacy Scholarship at Midland College.
"I've always been fascinated with nature ... I worked at a retail nursery for four years with my girlfriend, and then we decided that wasn't it for us. As soon as I quit, the lady that I volunteered for, one of the founding members of the preserve, found out that I was unemployed, and quickly scooped me up because she knew how knowledgeable I was around the native plants," he added.
Having students to teach is a learning experience for Guerrero and McAndrew. The Job Corps was piloted last year, Guerrero said.
"We learned a lot from the first year and we're learning a lot from this year, but it's definitely improved my leadership skills," McAndrew said.
As an aspiring scientist, Guerrero said it is very valuable to her to mentor young students and give them advice and knowledge that she didn't have as a student.
"One thing that we're realizing are from Evelyn's experience is a lot of these field tasks such as collecting flowers for plant presses or collecting insects and pinning them for research, she didn't learn until she was a sophomore in college. So getting these high school students hands-on experience with the field work and the more hands-on activities, the conservation, we're hoping to really spark interest and create lifetime conservationists," McAndrew said.
Guerrero said the students have an innate curiosity about science, but they have seen that grow just in the two weeks they have been part of the Corps.
"They have really taken on the skills that we've taught them and use them already in their personal lives, and then continue asking questions about the things that they see out here. A big part of what we want to teach is ecology and conservation — ecology like how things are interacting. That's a really important thing that we wanted to expose them to, but we're also the Job Corps so we really focus on careers as well," Guerrero said.
"All of our field trips that we do, all of our guest presenters ... we make sure to ask them their path, and how they got to where they are. We know that a lot of people will often get a certain degree in something and then change their mind and do something else. We know there's a lot of variability and unique stories that people have, so we really want to show the students that there's not just one certain path that you have to take. There's a plethora of career options and possibilities in these fields because you can use geology, math; you can use physics, chemistry and anything that has to do with ecology. We really want to show them that there's a lot of options in order to go into this field. Our students this year are mostly interested in some kind of engineering or STEM in general, so you really want to focus on their interest as well. We try to give elements of physics and mechanics and things like that into our curriculum," she added.
Young Women's Leadership Academy students Marina Garcia and Naylenie Gutierrez Parra are enjoying themselves.
Garcia said she is figuring out if she wants to go into environmental engineering.
"This is the perfect program for me to explore my options, get a better idea of what I want to do as future career, especially since if I'm going to be looking for a future career in Midland, Texas, I don't want to do oil and gas," Garcia said.
The Corps took Gutierrez Parra out of her comfort zone.
"Lately I've been trying to push myself out of my comfort zone and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do it," Gutierrez Parra said.
She added that it's like "a free trial."
Garcia said the program is definitely not what she thought it was going to be.
"I feel a lot better now than I did at the beginning of the program. I'm not as afraid of bugs as I was. I think the program is really great because it taught me a lot of new things," Garcia added.
Gutierrez Parra said she just learned from Guerrero that grasshoppers shed.
"And I didn't know that, and so this opportunity really helps me explore new things ... It really helped me look beneath the surface, that this is not just a landscape, it's an actual ecosystem and there's more things that go within it," Gutierrez Parra said.
The two girls said it's given them a different perspective on their community. They knew the preserve existed, but they hadn't visited it and now they've found it's like their own secret oasis.
They have both learned to identify plants and identify birds.
"I went to the lake this weekend and I was able to tell my parents a bunch of the trees, the plants, that were there, and the flowers. It was really nice. I know my parents are really proud of me because they're like you are learning something," Garcia said.
They would both recommend it to other kids and people, even if you're not an outdoorsy person. It also feels good to be outside and not looking at their phones, as well.
"Like I said, this is really out of my comfort zone. I'm used to staying at home and I think teenagers in our in our age should really take the chance to not stay at home all day (and) actually like do something," Gutierrez Parra said.