Pet smarts Pet smarts (February 16, 2005)

Kids learn responsibility and overcome fears through classroom animals

by Alexandria Rocha

On a warm Tuesday afternoon, children in Joan Barksdale's first-grade class at Barron Park Elementary School eagerly run circles in a patch of grass, searching and shrieking for dandelion greens.

Their mission is to find the proper food for the classroom pet, a 2-year old guinea pig named Bently. Grabbing handfuls of leaves, the kids race back to their friends already cradling the furry critter, feeding him his meal.

"He's like a ticket machine," Nima Golchin said.

Feeding Bently is part of the student's regular routine. So is cleaning his cage, making sure he has enough water and playing with him.

Like Barksdale, many elementary school teachers in Palo Alto have classroom pets, such as Robin Levy's guide dog-in-training, Alfie, and Cara Stoneburner's bearded dragons, Sabrina and Princess. Many others have tarantulas, fish, insects and turtles. They say keeping animals near provides for a wide variety of educational possibilities.

While learning to care and nurture for the pet, students also learn responsibility by feeding it and cleaning its living quarters. With some pets, children see a whole life cycle, which augments their science lessons.

At Juana Briones Elementary School, the kindergarten classrooms are filled with wildlife. Besides the two 1-year-old bearded dragons, also called "beardies," in Stoneburner's room, she has a small terrarium with three walking sticks and a fish tank with three Tinfoil Barbs and one Plecostomus, or sucker-mouth catfish.

In a classroom next door, a tank is home to a few tarantulas.

Stoneburner has always tried to keep some animals in her classroom. The benefits are far and wide for her, and often times they are unexpected.

For example, this year she has four Japanese children in her class who didn't speak any English their first day. Their first English word was "lizard."

"When I met these kids, the first thing they did was race to the lizards. They were a real icebreaker," she said.

Stoneburner also said it's important to start children early on the "creepy crawlies" -- it helps avoid any fears or phobias they may develop as adults. She said the man who sold her the beardies tank was thrilled after learning Stoneburner was a teacher for just that reason.

The type of classroom pets teachers have is often tailored by the amount of work certain animals require.

Instead of guinea pigs, Barksdale kept rats for years, but switched because they have to be cleaned all too often. Stoneburner used to have classroom snakes, but changed to lizards because it was too difficult and expensive to find live mice to feed them. With the beardies, she goes through 1,000 crickets a week, but they simply arrive Federal Express on her door step.

While it's common for elementary teachers to showcase wildlife, the trend falls off in middle school. One teacher, however, Robin Levy, brings her guide dog-in-training, a 4-month-old yellow Labrador named Alfie, to her Jordan Middle School sixth-grade class a few times a week.

Levy's students learn an entirely different type of animal interaction than those in Barksdale's class who take care of the guinea pig.

Unlike Bently, the students are not allowed to pet or play with Alfie -- when he's in their class, he is at work. As a guide dog in training, Alfie is learning to be around people, ignoring their attention and remaining undistracted. They have learned how rigorous and important the guide dog training process is.

"It's really great to know we're doing something that will make a difference in someone's life who is vision impaired," said Andy Hammer, 11.

If Alfie makes it through his training, Levy has invited her students to attend the graduation ceremony at his Guide Dogs for the Blind, Inc. in San Jose.

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