Lesson Plan: Dobie and the Longhorns

Lesson Plan 11/18- Dobie: The Longhorns

Objectives: To extend our sympathetic imaginations to allow us to further understand what role the longhorn plays in our lives. Create a greater sense of pride in our state, city, and school.

Goals: Survey the different aspects of longhorns and how they connect to our lives: address the subjects of Texas pride, querencia and animal treatment, discuss cows in India

Longhorn statue is located on the Heman Sweatt Campus between the Arno Nowotny Building and Hargis Hall?

Samantha’s Video: Texas, Our Texas
A lot of us grew up doing this.



The Myth of Texas
Jenny: “These are also the friends who have come to associate Texans with chewing reeds, playing banjos, and wearing boots with spurs.”

Kristen: “We all have friends and/or family that live outside of this great state (for reasons I do not understand...) that ask us the cliché things about riding to school on horses and living on ranches with cows.”

Samantha: “Northerners seem to hold this belief that Texans ride horses to school and keep cows in their backyard. For a family friend this actually appeared true as she was driving into Houston from Chicago with her brother and happened to get stuck on I-10 behind the trail riders.”

Kajal: “One of my new friends gasped in glee when I told her I was from Texas. “What does your horse that you ride to school look like?!?” she asked excitedly.”

What is the Texas Spirit and how does it affect you? What makes you most proud to be a Texan?
Samantha: “That spirit embodies all of the conquests Texans have accomplished—from the fight at the Alamo, to Sam Houston’s conquest of Santa Anna & Texas Independence from Mexico, to the annexation and the Mexican-American war, to NASA and its many successes. It also captures the soul of the West—the cattle drives and ranches that this state was founded upon.”

Jenny: “I have lived in other states before moving to Texas, and I can say that Texas is a state that I’m proud of. I have never felt a greater sense of pride and camaraderie here…”

Kristen: “We are all proud of our state, for better or for worse. We think we are the biggest and best (because we are…sorry Dana and Russell). And we are generally laid back and easy going people; where else in the world can you smile at everyone you meet on the street for no particular reason and be sure that they will smile right back?”

Kajal: “Texas is its own land. It has its own language, clothing style, legends – Texas has its own culture.”

Longhorns and what they represent as a symbol of Texas:
“The cattle I am thinking of made their reputations in fierce, hardy, persistent, resourceful, daring efforts to maintain freedom.” (829X)

Kristen: “There is something about the longhorn that brings out a certain amount of emotion in Texans. Their power, pride, yet usually gentle ways say a lot about Texans in general.”

Jenny: “The longhorn represents independence, fortitude, and adaptability, for “he moved elementally with drouth, grass, blizzards, out of the Arctic and the wind from the south” (X819).”

Longhorns: Mascot/querencia
Kristen: “For the University of Texas, there could be not be a better fitting mascot than the mighty longhorn. As a symbol of the state of Texas for many years, it only made sense for the first public university, funded by the state of Texas, to have the longhorn as its mascot.”

Jenny: “I believe that the University of Texas tries to keep the independent Texas spirit alive with the idea of the longhorn. “The Longhorn comes to connote courage, fighting ability, nerve, lust of combat, efficiency in deadly encounters, and the holy spirit of never-say-die.” (X886)

Jenny: “Another connotation of the longhorn is his love for the places he came from, something that UT takes great pride in. Not only does this school hope to educate and mold its students into freethinking, passionate, and successful individuals, but it also wishes to instill the love and pride of home, of the university.”

Dobie’s story of Sancho the Longhorn

Querencias and the quest to find them:
Austyn: “Like the Texas Longhorn I am “a home lover” (820). However, unlike the Longhorn, I don’t know where home is.”

Jennifer: “I've lived in my current house the longest so it may the closest thing I have to a querencia, but I could not equate my relationship to this house to that of a longhorn and its “home range,”[1] to which it remains a “persistent returner,”[2] regardless of the obstacles along the way.”

Jennifer: “Like Sancho who “chewed his cud peacefully and slept soundly, but” often found himself looking toward home, raising “his head as if memory and expectation were stirring,” I too would think back to Seoul[4] I associate Korea with my childhood: filled with innocence and playfulness.”

Samantha: “When it really came down to it though, I was drawn to my querencia, to Texas. I did not want to be far away from my family, from the land I grew up in.”

Finding our personal querencia – Should we already know where that is?

Jennifer: “I think we are more adaptable and can embrace many places within our lifetime, rather than just one.”

Austyn: “My sense of home wasn’t grounded in a physical location- I wasn’t like Sancho who’s “bed ground was near a certain mesquite tree just outside the gate” (823)- it was established in relationships I had built.”

Obstacles from returning to our personal querencias?
Jennifer: “Although I think about these times and the place in which they took place, I'm afraid of going back. Because I've been away from Korea for ten years now, I want to preserve the place in my memory and prevent tainting it by going back and rewriting what it means for me.”

Longhorns as Totem animals:
Does anyone feel a strong connection with the longhorn?
Eating Bevo?!? – “On January 20, 1920, Bevo I attained immortality when he was barbequed and served to more than 100 guests..”
Is that how we show respect?
Cows as totem animals in India

Totem Animal:
Jenny: “My personal “totem animal”, with which I feel “the psychological…kinship” (X901), is the wolf. It inspires in me both awe and fright, for it is mysterious and savage, harkening back to the old secrets of the world.”

Kajal: “However, as much longhorn pride as I have, I cannot help but feel an affinity for an adorable creature which has recently captured my heart: the squirrel!”

Kristen: “As the Encyclopedia Americana states a totem animal is “an animal… with which a social or religious group feels a special affinity and which is often considered to be the mythical ancestor of the group.”

How to find your totem animal:
1.Since we are drawn to that which resonates with us, what animal, bird, or insect are you drawn to?
2.When you go to the park, forest, or zoo what animal are you most interested in seeing?
3.What animal do you most frequently see when you're out in nature or in the city?
4.What animals are you currently interested in learning about?
5.Which animal do you find most frightening or intriguing?
6.Have you ever been bitten or attacked by an animal?
7.Is there a recurring animal in your dreams or do you have one you have never forgotten?
From: http://www.animaltotem.com/find-your-totem.html

Go around the room and name our totem animals…