First, regarding permission.... I never asked! I just brought in my critters, and nobody ever complained. Case Closed.

Kathy Love, recently, knew someone who wanted to donate some corns to a teacher to be the classroom pets. It worked out for me to be the one to get these corns for my High School MATH classroom.

I've already established a reputation as a teacher who has pets in the classroom. This year my students were mostly disappointed that I had no animals in my classroom (School started the 5th). I told them there was a person who wanted to donate two animals to our classroom, and when they arrived they would be our permanent class pets. They were very excited, with a few frightened faces. Overall it was a nice atmosphere of expectation.

I just got them this weekend (BEAUTIFUL!). I brought them into the classroom and the kids immediately noticed that there was something new in the back of the class. For a five minute period in each class, I introduced the two cornsnakes to the class. A few students showed "learned fear"... fear inspired by upbringing, but luckily nobody this year demonstrated a serious pathological fear. (I had a student like that one year, she turned GHOST WHITE, but was able to be in my class so long as I didn't take the snakes out with her there, and I sat her across the room from the snakes).

Tomorrow's opening quiz in my classes will be to ask them to come up with a boy and a girl name for the two snakes.... I'm going to pick out 5 female and 5 male names I like, and then at the end of the week, the students will be able to vote on their favorite names for each.

The only complaints I've ever had was when I kept rats in the classroom, and they were too messy and/or required too many cleanings of their cages to remain odor free.

I've never had any concerns from the administration regarding the animals, and I've always been very open about having them.

One thing I do want to share.... Being a math class it doesn't seem that the animals are that relevant. Last year I taught freshmen for the first time. I was amazed to find out just how strongly those animals effected my students. The freshmen, while doing their best to be young adults, still had a lot of the child inside. The animals I had "touched" that not-very-deeply-buried child within my students, and I really had a stronger impact on those freshmen than I would have expected to have. I have students this year who tell stories of coming into my classroom and seeing my animals from previous years, dragged in to see them by their friends. My students know I'm not a robot, know I'm human. All of these things make a difference in the actual learning environment. I won't go without animals in my classroom, as they really do make a learning difference.
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~Sasheena

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