Education – A Houston Zoo Blog

A night tour is fun, unless it is raining or the animals are off exhibit!

One of the key characteristics of everyone in the Education Department is flexibility.  Of course, I don’t mean that we are all gymnasts.  (Although we do have two former cheerleaders and several former dancers on our team.)  I mean that the education staff are each creative enough to make it work when things don’t go quite as planned.  For every program we offer, there is at least one element of unpredicability.  

We have several on grounds programs that involve a tour of animal exhibits.  For Wild Wheels and Senior Safari, this may mean that one of the featured animals for the week is off exhibit or impossible to see.  Our Wild Winks overnights sometimes have a bigger challenge: the morning tour is before the zoo opens, and this means that every exhibit may display a cleaning keeper instead of an animal. 

Another element of programs that can turn into an element of surprise is booking.  Programs like Camp Zoofari and Safari School are individual registrations, making them a bit more predictable, but for groups that reserve programs we may end up with something different than what we expect.  For field trip programs, especially Adventure Classes, the biggest obstacle is usually number of students.  Our two classrooms are limited by fire code to a small group size, and if a school books one program for more than one class, we may end up having to change either the schedule or the location at the last minute.  Size is not the only piece that can be unpredictable; age can be as well.  We tailor our programs and curricula to the age group we expect, and if a Scout group or Wild Winks turns out to be younger or older than requested we may have to get really flexible.  

The variability of weather in Houston can also present its own challenges.  Our field research program at Texas City Prairie Preserve, Camp Zoofari, and Wild Winks are the three programs that require the most flexibility when the weather changes.  I’m not just talking about rain, either; rain we can handle.  Getting a little wet never hurt anybody.  Lightning and thunder, however, can cause some serious damage and force us to restrict our classes to the Education Building. 

ZooMobiles are a special brand of the unknown; unless we have been to a location before, we can’t predict much about the site, the setup, or even the class.  Sometimes what the group requested and what they are expecting are even different.  We’ve had programs where we were expecting to do 4 half-hour presentations and they wanted 2 hour-long programs, trips when we’ve packed to present Habitats and then have to change to Texas at the last minute, and even events where we planned for a festival table and what we ended up doing were back-to-back assembly programs! 

What a festival table should look like, as long as there's actually a table.

While there are big things that we know are unpredictable, sometimes it’s the little things that can be the biggest challenge.  I arrived once at a festival ZooMobile, which is basically a table of biofacts and a few handling animals, to discover that the event had run out of tables!  The Docent volunteer who was with me and I got out a few large biofacts to hold, and took turns handling one animal at a time.  A younger group on a Wild Wink overnight had gotten settled into the classrooms to sleep only to realize that the mounted animal biofacts that are kept in the rooms were too scary, and the whole group had to move into another room. 

The little surprises can’t be predicted, but we can prepare for some of the more common challenges.  We always include multiple animals in our planning for the “touring” programs, so even if one animal is not visible, hopefully others are.  There is spare food available for overnight programs, in case someone with a dietary restriction attends without warning.  And our biggest preparation is simply knowing that things may not go as planned, and a flexibility to make quick changes that is a key part of who we are as educators, and as the Education Department.