Last week, my blog shared some info about animals I had in my classroom when I was teaching – at the country school, the public school, and the school at a world-renowned hospital. I’d like to continue talking about those critters – even though, I’ve had others who lived with me in my home. For this week, let’s go back to school.
I left the “school animal” stories at a place where my classroom had been moved from the building with the two offices that had been converted to classrooms to the new school building.
Before going to that new classroom, I’d like to share information about the animals in that two-room situation.
We had an aquarium – shouldn’t every classroom have an aquarium? Our fish for that tank were not just gold fish. We did have some other colorful fish, as well.
One of the most interesting animals for that room was a horned lizard. Many people call them horny toads, but they really are lizards. A local pet-supply store sold these animals. The spikes all over the body do appear to be horns, but they are soft. Our lizard was about one-and-a-half inches long. In their natural habitat, they live in a sandy area, bury themselves beneath the surface of the sand, and wait for food to walk by. At that point, they spring into action, catching whatever is there for a meal. Our horned lizard lived on mealworms. It also appeared to like being held. Perhaps, the warmth of the hand holding it was appreciated. I don’t really know.
One of my students Todd had difficulties with “book learning.” But, he was a wizard about life. He would often bring things to the classroom – such as the time he brought in a rock, telling me that the rock could burn. This was something very new to me. Taking him at his word, we set about lighting the rock – indeed, it could burn. Learning comes from so many places. Todd had introduced the entire class and me to oil shale! The students investigated oil shale. What was it – really? Who might have discovered this rock that could burn? Why could it be a good thing to have? Where was it mined? All sorts of questions were answered with their investigations.
And, then, there was the bug! I’m certainly not opposed to having bugs in my classroom. I do have great difficulty with cockroaches, silverfish, and earthworms – I can’t explain the earthworms thing.
Todd brought in an insect surrounded by about a teaspoonfull of dirt. When he dumped the entire mess, insect and dirt, into my hand, he instructed me to keep my hand very stiff. “Or,” he said. “It will bite.” I followed his instructions, keeping my hand taut. Suddenly, the dirt began to move revealing an insect about a quarter of an inch long and, maybe, an eighth of an inch across. It’s appearance to me was something that only another of its species could love.
Again, research by the class taught us that it was an ant lion, sometimes called a doodle bug. They are grey or brown and, believe it or not, can only walk backward. They build their homes in the sand – something that looks like an cone or funnel down into the sand. They sit at the bottom of the cone, waiting for lunch. I figure they must be the most patient creatures in our universe. They are reported to be voracious eaters.
The construction of their body is that they have large pinchers at their head (thus, the warning that they bite) with a rather pointed rear for digging. That is how they make the cone home in the sand. Using a plastic box, we made a home with the required soft dirt. We didn’t put a lid on the box. After all, it couldn’t get out.
Although partial to feeding on ants that stumble into their pit, mealworms served as its food. (It never argued about the menu.) We would drop a mealworm into the cone. The ant lion would grab the worm with its pinchers and dig backward, burying that meal in the sand. Several hours or days later, we would find the carcass of the mealworm somewhere on the top of the sand. Apparently, the mealworm’s body fluid was its meal.
Our biggest surprise was that one morning, entering the classroom, we found a beautiful gossamer-winged creature sitting at the top of the plastic box. With more research, the students learned that the ant lion is the larva of the lacewing. We took the lacewing out to a bush close to our building, setting it free. Todd’s contributions to his classmates’ learning was greatly appreciated.
It was in that classroom that I introduced Eastern Corn Snakes. So much of the time, we are taught as children that snakes are to be avoided – in fact, killed. Larry’s father was of the opinion that the only good snake was a dead snake. I believe that children need to be aware of the good that snakes do. That they deserve a place in our universe. Indeed, they also need to know when to avoid a dangerous snake – or any other living creature that can be a danger to them.
The Eastern Corn Snakes came to us as pencil-thin, twelve inch creatures. Their home was a very large aquarium. The children were allowed to hold the snakes – if they wanted to. Larry built a frame for their home which was kept locked. The children knew that they were only allowed to hold the snakes when I was there to supervise. Children are curious, however, and I did not want to search for a snake, in case one was on the loose!
While still in the two-room situation, Michael came to be a student. Michael is the first child on the autism spectrum that I had ever taught. He was a tall boy, about nine or ten years old. School was not successful for him, so he had not attended much schooling. The federal law HB-94-142 had not yet been passed by Congress, so at that time, pubic schools were not required to provide education for all students. He could not read. He had no math skills. Writing was non-existent for him. He would have been in the third grade, had his situation been “normal.”
When Michael was introduced to the classroom, one of his counselors assured me that he wouldn’t be able to be in the classroom with snakes. I, in turn, assured the counselor that he would be just fine. Michael stayed and was assigned his own desk. While involved with some of the other students, I turned to see Michael at the snake cage, attempting to take the locked lid from the cage. He and I had a discussion about that – I don’t remember if Michael ever held one of the snakes; I do know that he touched one with his fingers and didn’t go ballistic. Michael was with us long enough to learn to read, write, and multiply. As with so many children on the spectrum, he was very intelligent. He simply was on the spectrum! I don’t know what happened with his schooling when he went home. I do know that he had great parents who were willing to help when they knew how.
Moving to our new classrooms in our new building, the animals went along. We took the snakes and a wolf spider who had been living in a very large jar, covered by a screen. Again, mealworms were the food of choice for the spider, not the snakes. The spider spun a complicated maze of webbing for catching its prey. I can tell you that the cage of the wolf spider smelled -really something awful. Then, one morning, the students and I arrived to find an egg sack in the bottom of the wolf spider’s lair. The children and I discussed what would probably happen if that egg sack burst open and released all of the spider babies. We decided that the best thing to do was to take the spider and its egg sack outside and put it somewhere safe. And, we did just that.
We still had the rabbit/guinea pig cage in our new classroom. My students took a trip to the hospital’s lab to see what happens with their blood tests, etc., and they saw the resident guinea pigs. And, of course, wanted one for their classroom. As luck would have it, the lab was about to reduce their supply of guinea pigs; the lab director said we could have one. The children selected a female, and we took her back to our classroom to live with us. They named her “Love,” a good name, it turned out. Little did we know that Love was very, very expectant. Within a week, she delivered four babies – which the children immediately named. Those guinea pigs were a great learning experience. First, the children learned that the newborns had teeth (not many animals have teeth when they are first born). They learned that these newborns could eat solid food, as well as drink the milk their mom provided. They weighed and measured each baby; keeping track of the measurements. They understood the job of a scientist in keeping accurate records. When fully grown, each of the babes was adopted by a child who was being discharged at that time.
The snakes were not the only reptiles in the classroom. Years before, I had acquired a green iguana for home. We named him Sam, after a not-very-well-liked, former brother-in-law. Sam was not ugly; neither was he beautiful. He was a typical, green iguana. When Sam came to live in my home, he was about eighteen inches long. But, with good food and no predators, he grew to be about four feet long and never lost his tale having to grow a new one back.
Larry didn’t like Sam. While he tolerated the snakes when they had to come home, he loathed Sam! However, he did build Sam a very large, circular cage that looked a lot like a silo, put in a branch for climbing, and secured the door with a lock.
Then, one day (and, truly, I don’t know how this happened), Sam got out of his cage. We could not find him. He wasn’t climbing the curtains – that’s the first place we looked. He was no where to be seen. Larry didn’t look for him. Rather, he raced into the bathroom and closed and locked the door. Then, turning around, he saw Sam – in the bathtub! Out of the bathroom came Larry. I put on the heavy-duty gloves (Sam’s claws were sharp and not clean) and retrieved him, put him back in his cage, and laughed a lot.
Sam went to my classroom at the hospital. They enjoyed watching him climb in his cage. They fed him his lunch of vegetables. Again, another learning experience for the students.
I think that, perhaps, one of the most enjoyable critters that lived in one of my classrooms was the pheasant. Another field trip took us to a hatchery that had pheasant eggs. We had an incubator, took the eggs home, and proceeded to follow the instructions on how to get them to hatch. As I remember, we had five eggs, but only one matured to hatching stage. At the time for hatching, we could see that the little one was having difficulty breaking the shell. So, we called Larry – a farmer at heart.
Larry told us to do what any mother would do. Break the shell to help the hatching that was going on. So, we did. Very slowly, we took the shell off of the chick. After drying out, it was able to walk around the cage we provided. We learned that chicks of any kind had to be kept warm, so we had a light on the cage all of the time. It was a very short time before the pheasant was strutting around the room. One morning, the children and I entered the room to hear crowing. Our pheasant was crowing! We figured with the crowing, it must be a boy pheasant. We decided that the thing to do was to take him to a place that we knew was a sanctuary for these bird. A field trip took us there – we set our pheasant free to roam with the others.
When I left teaching to become a school administrator, the animals that had become a significant part of my life were adopted by others who enjoy having critters in their lives as much as I do. I did, however, keep the fifty-gallon aquarium and install it in my office. The goldfish that lived in it were as long as four inches – big goldfish.
As a school super on the Eastern Plains of my state, we had a couple of boys who came from a relatively dysfunctional family. They were very good at creating situations that led them to my office. At first, when they were sent to my office and because they were only in third grade, we would talk about the aquarium, the fish, how to feed them, etc., all the while with them sitting on my lap. (I know – I probably couldn’t do that in this NO-TOUCH society that we live in today. But, back then, it worked.) After calming the situation, we would talk about what had happened in the classroom that resulted in them paying a visit to me. We would work on a commitment that we could both agree to and we, then, walked back to the classroom.
I think that animals in the classroom should be a required element. Of course, I’ve been out of teaching children for years, now. I have come to understand that teachers are under-the-gun to have their students at page “xyz” by a specific date and getting top scores on the achievement tests, or their funding is likely to be cut. Animals aside, I’m sure I would not survive the challenges to today’s teachers – nor would I want to.
Be Safe and Be Well.
The Cranky Crone
Thoughtful comments are always appreciated.
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