Wildcat Wall of Fame helps students achieve and aspire

Just outside the Principal’s office at Wyandotte Elementary School in Morgan City is a bulletin board. Across from the bulletin board is also a bench.
During parent teacher conferences, those waiting aren’t usually sitting on it. Instead, they’re studying the board.
At lunchtime, the students at Wyandotte aren’t sitting, either. They, too, are looking over the board.
What’s so special about this particular bulletin board, one might ask? After all, there are others along the same hallway.
First might be its name, “Wildcat Wall of Fame,” which would indicate some sort of celebratory status.
Second, and most im-portant, is those celebrities happen to be the Wyandotte students.
However, though not an exclusive bulletin board, it tends to have an overriding hunting and fishing theme. Photographs, articles and memes like blooding the cheeks of a young boy or girl who harvested their first deer tend to stand out among the other items posted.
The Wildcat Wall of Fame is the brainchild of Adam Rhodes, a 24-year-old teacher in his third year at Wyandotte Elementary, who happens to also be a hunter.
The Wall of Fame was something Rhodes wanted to do when he first interned at the school.
“I told the kids, whenever you come to school and have done anything that you’re proud of — anything — I want to know about it so we can share it with others,” Rhodes explained. “Every once in a while I’ll get some-one who asks, ‘why isn’t it just for sports?’ The thing about it is, not all kids are going to be baseball players, football players, softball or volleyball players, but hunt-ing and fishing is something everybody can do. I’ve got kids who are into dancing, cheerleading and Boy Scouts, but a lot of the time the kids want to bring in their hunting stuff because they know that I like to hunt. Plus, it’s a huge part of our local culture.”
A perusal of the Wall of Fame will reveal pictures of alligators, iguanas, bottle-nose dolphins and even a Boy Scout instructor holding a rattlesnake with scouts looking on.
According to Rhodes, dur-ing a campout somewhere in north Louisiana that one of his students attended with the local Morgan City troop, a rattlesnake found its way into their campsite.
After killing the snake, the instructors taught the kids how to skin it properly, make something out of the reptile’s hide and even cooked the meat.
With approximately 300 students, getting on the Wildcat Wall of Fame bulle-tin board is a big deal and important to the kids.
One parent called Rhodes wondering what was going on when her son told her she had to send a picture of him and the ducks he shot that weekend to school with him on Monday morning. She mentioned to Rhodes she hadn’t even gotten one for herself yet.
Rhodes, whose two sisters are also school teachers along with his mother, who happens to teach just down the hall from him, says because Wyandotte is an elementary school, he gets a lot of “first” deer pictures and stories.
Known to the students as “Coach,” Rhodes tells the story of how one student came up to him so animated, he couldn’t get his words out.
Rhodes said, “He came up to me so excited, he couldn’t hardly talk. He just kept saying, ‘Coach. Coach. Coach. Coach,’ where I finally had to stop him and say, ‘what is it? What do you need to tell me?’ And he says, ‘Coach, I shot my first deer this weekend. Can we put it on the wall of fame?’ It’s a big deal to them. But, they’ve walked by and looked at that board 180 days during the year and will stop every day to see who’s on it and look at themselves. If you come by here at lunch hour, they’re glued to that board.”
For the students who hunt deer as Rhodes does, he includes a little friendly competition among them and gives a little prize to the one who harvests the biggest deer at the end of the season.
Rhodes pointed out he’ll add a few of his own pictures on the Wall of Fame, where the students can compare trophies. Quite often it generates banter between the students and teacher, where occasionally a student will say, ‘Coach, I killed a bigger deer than you did,’ picking at him.
The Wildcat Wall of Fame, Rhodes says, helps to expose students to things they have never done before and acts as a confidence builder besides just being a source of pride. Quite often, students see one of their classmates who hunt or fish, where they look at it as something they’d like to possibly try.
“It’s for the kids,” Rhodes said. “This is what we’re here for as teachers. But, if it also spikes their interest where they say, ‘Coach, I want to go hunting,’ I’m all for that, too. People always talk about keeping kids off of drugs and off of this and that — you’ve got to give them options. If anything else, the Wildcat Wall of Fame opens their eyes to possibilities.”
EDITOR’S NOTE: Flores is The Daily Review’s Outdoor writer. If you wish to make a comment or have an anecdote, recipe or story you wish to share, you can contact John K. Flores at 985-395-5586 or at gowiththeflo@cox.net or visit his Facebook page at Gowiththeflo Outdoors.