Courtesy of Shawn Kaeser
“I know so much about the bullfrog,” says Shawn Kaeser. “If I were tough enough to get a tattoo, it would be a bullfrog.”
The Willard Grizzell Middle School social studies teacher’s fixation with the amphibian may seem odd, but it dates back two decades to an in-class example during a lesson on legislation. That eventually led to success at the statehouse and a bullfrog license plate – but it wasn’t without significant effort.
In 2002, Kaeser’s students pointed out Ohio’s lack of a state amphibian. Soon, the class had hatched a plan to fill that void.
“I thought, … ‘I need to get children to understand the legislative process,’ but generally if I just put slides up it’s not engaging at all,” Kaeser says. “It was kind of a safe way to approach it that they had a little bit of excitement and interest in.”
The Bill-d Up
First, Kaeser led his students in selecting an amphibian. Toads were deemed to have a bad reputation. Bullfrogs, popular in frog jump events throughout Ohio and found in all of the state's 88 counties, seemed an easy and recognizable choice.
Still, the civic engagement exercise proved more daunting than expected.
“The goal really was just to get (students) involved,” Kaeser says. “I did not know from the very beginning that it would take eight to nine years to get the bullfrog approved as a symbol.”
A student-led effort to create the bullfrog as a state symbol seemed a safe bet, but as often happens in politics, opposition soon arose. Students testifying to the Ohio General Assembly faced arguments countering that the bullfrog isn’t native to Ohio and are known to be cannibalistic.
Students came and went, along with state representatives. Soon, a Cleveland-area middle school had a proposal to name the spotted salamander the state amphibian. A stalemate seemed inevitable.
In another apt political lesson for students, negotiations between the two sides found a compromise: the salamander would become the state amphibian while the bullfrog became the state frog.
“Honestly, I didn’t think it would ever go anywhere,” Kaeser says. “Finally, they struck a deal, which is what politics is all about.”
Kaeser says that, while the long process didn’t go over well with graduating students, it provided a valuable example of how and why government decisions can progress at a snail’s pace.
“It’s designed to be slow to bring in people on all sides,” he says. “It was frustrating for (the students) because they’d be off to high school and I’d say, ‘Oh, sorry kids, I’m going to have to start this next year.”
Ribbit-ing Lessons
After spending so long working with students on the bullfrog legislation, it’s little surprise that Kaeser and his classes returned to the matter.
Leading to the 10-year anniversary of the bullfrog achieving state symbol status, Kaeser and his students set out to get the bullfrog on a license plate.
While the first push in Grizzell’s bullfrog saga was more symbolic, this effort sought to make a more concrete impact. The license plates were proposed to raise money for wildlife conservation in Ohio.
Frogs are particularly good representatives for the cause. Researchers often use the amphibian as an indicator of environmental concerns because frogs reliably show population decline before other species.
And students were no less engaged when Kaeser incorporated frogs – and even live feedings – into the classroom.
“Watching bullfrogs eat was fun in 2002, and it’s still fun,” he says. “(The students) get into it.”
Unlike the first legislative push in what Kaeser calls “project bullfrog,” the license plate passed without a hitch.
In June 2021, the plates became available to the public with part of the proceeds going to support a state wildlife habitat fund. Those “funds will be used to protect and preserve Ohio wetlands and for educational programs related to the bullfrog and similar wetland animals,” according to Ohio Revised Code.
Twenty years since the project’s beginnings, Kaeser considers one of the greatest achievements to be the impact it made on students.
“You plant these seeds but you’re not sure where it takes kids,” Kaeser says. “I hope that many went into science or politics or government, maybe even education, and will do these things with their students.”
License to Create
Kaeser’s project bullfrog had implications beyond his social studies classroom. Science classes in particular were able to coordinate content for inter-disciplinary overlap between subjects.
The license plate effort provided even more opportunities to engage students.
To create the license plate design, Todd Arnold, an art teacher at Grizzell at the time who now teaches at Dublin Scioto High School, had his students take on roles similar to a design firm.
He tasked his students with researching as they would for a client project in a professional setting. His class considered important aspects of the bullfrog, stylistic expectations for a license plate and technical requirements such as space and format.
“One of our big things in not just art is the discussion of careers,” Arnold says. “Everybody with art assumes you can only be an artist, and that’s just not even close.”
Because software beyond the skills of the classroom was required to make the design, Arnold created the final product, but students contributed heavily by submitting design ideas and giving feedback on his design.
Arnold says that he is one of a number of current or former Grizzell teachers who have the frog license plate on their vehicles today.
Cameron Carr is an editor for CitySceneMedia Group. Feedback welcome atccarr@cityscenemediagroup.com.
