This spring, the fifth and sixth grade students had a unique opportunity to see a Hockaday graduate putting her STEM degree to work while also helping the community. Kathy Rogers ’68 is the founder of Rogers Wildlife Rehabilitation Center (www.rogerswildlife.org ), the only clinic of its type in North Texas. Kathy brought her Outdoor Learning Center to Hockaday to teach the girls about what to do when they see an injured bird. Her special guests, two baby owls, stole the show. Needless to say, our future Hocka-veterinarians and other animal- and nature-lovers were thrilled with this special presentation during advisory!

 

Ms. Rogers was invited by Hockaday's fifth grade Girl Scout Troop 2769 who chose their Bronze Award project to help build awareness for bird rescue and Rogers Wildlife’s work. To formulate a plan to help Rogers Wildlife Rehabilitation Center, the troop visited the Center to better understand their needs. Founder Kathy Rogers said one of their greatest needs was getting more tissues as they use 8-10 boxes per day in baby bird season from March-September--that's 2,100+ boxes of Kleenex per year! For baby birds, the clinic volunteers make nests out of tissues and change the nests every 15 minutes after they feed them. The birds also use the tissue boxes as hiding holes, and baby ducks use them as shelters to feel safe and play.

 

After learning about this need, the girls then worked with science teacher Jennifer Stimpson to do a grade-wide tissue drive. The fifth grade girls collected 140+ boxes of tissues at school and secured a product donation of 500 boxes of Kleenex from Kimberly-Clark.

 

Girls in the fifth grade Hockaday troop include: Tukwa Ahsan, Grace Dorward, Victoria Chien, Sydney Ghorayeb, Cate Goglia, Juliana Lu, Kendall Marchant, Margot Meyer, Victoria Newsome, Caroline Rich, Lucy Jane Roberts, Stella Sigurdsson, Naz Soysal, Payton Thurman, Megan Vettoretti, and Sophia Yung.

 

To learn more about Rogers Wildlife Center, read this article in The Dallas Morning News.