Critters I Have Known – Perso
For thirty years, I served my country as an educator. And, I think – Once an educator – always, an educator. It was always my idea that a classroom – the four walls – was just a place in which children could be introduced to the world. Sometimes, that introduction was by reading books and magazines, verbal instruction from the teacher, and such, and getting as much “learnin’” as possible from the task. I also thought that an important part of the education process was bringing the outside in. Or, taking the children – out.
And, so, my classrooms were always filled with plants, rocks, sticks, animals – you name it. If it wasn’t dangerous, it could come in. Most of us have read reports about how a classroom would have a guinea pig, and how the children would each take turns taking the animal home for a weekend, providing care for that weekend. While we did have a guinea pig in the classroom where I taught at National Jewish, other animals inhabited our space along with the children, guinea pig, our Foster Grandparent, and me.
But, to start at the beginning, in a village at the western foot of a mountain pass in my state, it might be good to talk about the animals there. The school was a one-teacher school in “cow country.” I was the only teacher with twenty-five or so children in eight grades. Not an easy task, teaching children in eight grades.
The credit for any successes that I had belonged to my critic teacher while student teaching – Mrs. Doyle – of the Doyles for whom the local village of Doyleville was named. She was tough – really tough, but because of her instruction and guidance, she sent me out into the world, capable of teaching at my first school of more than twenty children in eight different grades.
In that one-teacher school, I did not bring animals into the classroom. Rather, we had plenty of them outside, just across the fence. Cow country, it was. The surrounding land was home to cattle, horses, dogs, cats, lizards, snakes, and, truthfully, I don’t know what all. The students, daily, lived with these animals on their farms and ranches.
After that teaching experience, I was in a classroom of six-year-olds in a public school and, then, a class of children who were hospitalized at a national hospital specializing in respiratory disease. The public school’s “Readiness Room” was for children who had completed kindergarten but were not quite ready to tackle the tasks of first grade. And, although we did some experiences with literacy (reading, math, writing), the purpose of the curriculum was to build in experiences that would help the children’s understanding when they were involved in that “socially-compulsive, near-center task” that we call reading. Getting them to the place where they could look with their eyes, but let their hands teach their eyes to see. This was an incredibly understanding school and neighborhood of parents to understand that some children simply need more experiences under their belt to really learn to read, etc.
This classroom had lots and lots of animals. Some lived in the room with the children. Others came for a short visit. We explored the world on a school bus. The zoo. The art museum. The park with special apparatus for developing muscles, thinking, and ideas. We learned what a mechanic does. What it takes to make cookies. Where birds really live. How bread and butter come to be.
After the Readiness Room, I worked at National Jewish Hospital. My classroom space seemed to be an “after thought.” Five students (who had been kicked out of the primary-grade classroom by the teacher who was supplied to the hospital by the local school district) were my students. Truth be told, these five children were a bit recalcitrant. They didn’t like the teacher; she didn’t like them. Apparently, she had decided that she didn’t have to put up with their behaviors, so out they went. The hospital didn’t know what to do with those children, so they hired me.
The classroom, itself, was about ten-by-ten feet square; it had been a locker room, next to the gymnasium. Into that classroom, we put a bookshelf and a round table for the children and their chairs. I did have an adult chair, but no teacher desk. We also housed a very large rabbit and a guinea pig. They lived in a cage in the large bathroom that was connected to the classroom. The room was large enough to house their cage that was about two feet by two feet by four feet, with room left over for the toilet and sink. The cage had a shelf onto which the rabbit would jump when the guinea pig tried to sleep across his back behind his ears. We, the children and I, learned an important lesson with a couple of other animals we brought into the classroom.
The children residing at NJH lived for weeks and, sometimes, months at the hospital while the medical staff worked to figure out how to best help the them, medically. There were two floors of a building where the childen’s rooms were; in addition to medical staff; counselors were assigned to each floor to provide daily-life care and activities. These children often had been so protected by their “home,” parents and teachers, that they were not given some of the same experiences that other children might have. I attempted to allow the children opportunities to experience activities from which they had been excluded because they were sick with asthma and other respiratory problems. We were two floors by elevator away from the medical staff who could help in case of an emergency. I figured we could do things and not be afraid for the children. So, in my classroom, we DID have furry animals – prohibited everywhere else they had lived.
I decided that having gold fish would be a good thing to have in the classroom. We made space for a child’s wading pool for them to have large living quarters. They were really beautiful; all gold, about an inch and a half long.
I also planned an outing to a local park where a small stream, actually a ditch, ran from one lake to another. I knew the stream posed no physical harm for the children if they waded into it. We took slices of liver provided by the hospital kitchen, tied the pieces up with string, and proceeded to the park to catch crawdads. Or, crayfish or crawfish, if you prefer. The children were successful catching about five of them that we took back to the classroom.
And, where did we put them? Into the water, of course, with the goldfish. BIG MISTAKE! The next morning, we came into the classroom and found shreds of goldfish in the water. The crawdads had had a belly full of goldfish during the night. We, the children and I, learned a very important lesson, that day. The crawdads went back to their home in the ditch. The next time we had gold fish, they went into a real aquarium!
The “powers-that-be” finally realized that the small classroom housing my students was really too small. So, we were moved across the busy boulevard into two rooms in another building. Two rooms! What could I do with two rooms? Fill them up, of course. Larry used to say that if I had a room the size of a football field, I would fill it up with … well, with whatever I wanted.
At some point, I decided that having two rooms was too much to manage, so we became residents in only one of them. A room that was still large enough to have desks, bookshelves, a real desk for me, and ANIMAL CAGES. Again, “the powers-that-be” decided to build a real school, the The size of my classroom opened up great opportunities for bringing the outside in.
Again, NJH powers-that-be decided to build a bona fide school building for our classes. By now, we had four classroom teachers, a physical education teacher, as well as a school director and a secretary. The building had individual classrooms for the junior-senior high school, grades 4-6, grades 1-3 (mine), and an early childhood classroom. Those classrooms were about five times what my students and I had been living in for our first classroom. We also had a gymnasium, a swimming pool, and an extra room for “whatever.” Before leaving there, I created a library for the students in that “whatever” room.
The animals that I had in the old two-part classroom went with me to the new building. And, we added a few more. We still had our rabbit and our guinea pig. One of the children adopted the rabbit when going home. Another adopted our first guinea pig.
There are other animals to talk about. They can wait until next week’s blog. So …
More later.
Be Safe and Be Well.
The Cranky Crone
Thoughtful comments are always appreciated.
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