There was a picture today of 2 bearded dragons on the front page of the local section of the Times Herald. The article was about how many teacher are shying away from furry critter due to student allergies. The furry critters are now being replaced with reptiles. Max and Frieda are member of a 2nd grade classroom at Fair Haven Elementary School. I thought this was neat and wanted to share.

It does help get kids some good reptile exposure for once, which I think is great. The only thing that bothers me is that many teachers just get the reptiles, assuming the store employee is telling them everything they need to know.

Back when I worked at a pet store in North Dakota, a lady came in and wanted a bunch of our "generic" tadpoles (actually bullfrogs). I naturally asked her what she wanted with them, and she had planned to bring them to the classroom, let them morph into frogs, and then she assumed she could release them. I told her that they were not native to our state, and if established they would decimate native species. Not only that, but it was illegal to relsease them.

Its not that she was a bad person, she simply just didn't know. I'm all for reptiles in the schools, just as long as the teachers take time to be students for a little while

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Hello,

That is nice to see. Kids need this early education. One of my concerns evolves around the ending of the school year. I certainly hope that these teachers intend on taking the reptile homes and not "giving" them to the students.

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I think I can contact the teacher through school e-mail system. Start talking about dragons and suggest that she check herpcenter out. The article said that the students have been researching them on the internet. Using them for their journal writing and keeping track of the measurements. One is 14" and the other is 10" They look like adult dragons to me...but what do I know.

I think it is very cool that reptiles are getting good exposure. My son took pictures to school of his uro that he got for christmas. He was a little disappointed that some of the other kids weren't as excited about it as he was. He talked Spike up during his show and tell time and had some of the other kids a little more intrigued. I told him that when the weather was much warmer, I would arrange things with his teacher to bring Spike in for a live presentation. He was so excited (as am I).

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Hard to notice, gleaming from the sky
When you're staring at the cracks
Hard to notice what is passing by
With eyes lowered

"The Leaving Song"- AFI

0.0.1 Mali Uromastyx (Spike)
1.2.0 Bearded Dragons (Hercules, Megora & Eeyore)
1.0.0 Bi-color Flame Point Himalayan (Koda)
1.2.0 Children (Dimitri, Mercedes, and Mariah)

I think its great that kids are getting involved with reptiles, but I would imagine that on most weekends they might be left without food, and lighting and heating. My mom works in a school, and when she worked in the lower grades (k-4), some teachers had guinnea pigs, and over the weekends they were just left there, and they didnt know what to do with them over the summer, and were just going to leave them there to die. The teachers pry dont know much about the dragons either and pry dont do much research on them, and they most likely have improper caging and whatnot. There was a 4th grade teacher that some of my friends had a while back, and she had an iguana, I didnt see it much, and dont remember much about it, but the cage was fairly small for the size of the iguana, and was left there on weekends, Im guessing without food, clean water, and lighting/heating.

I like the idea of kids learning more about reptiles, but in my opinion I dont like the ideas of any animals in school since in a lot of cases they are left there over weekends, and are sometimes in small, not properly heated cages.


Oooh and if the kids dont know much about handling and what not, the dragons pry gets held by the kids a lot, and might get injured.

Sean's class has a baby iguana and a tarantula. We took the tarantula for Christmas break it hadn't eaten in a while (at 6 crickets in 12 days). Another student took home the iguana didn't put it light on, didn't really feed it. We should have taken both at least they would have both gotten the proper care. Sean as been taking in crickets each week, so at least we know they are being some what fed. I don't want to offend the teacher by giving her care sheets but maybe I should.

Just to clarify, you aren't feeding crickets to the iguana are you? That is the way the post sounds. Iguanas should not be fed animal protien.
I certainly would! If the teacher is not taking proper care of the animal then she is also teaching her class how to not take care of them! I would approach her, strike up a conversation and just basically ask about the animals care. Explain to her that "you just happen to have" an excellant care sheet for the animal and offer her a copy. The worst she can do is say no. And if she is really treating them poorly and is not open to change an anonymous phone call to the principal concerning violations of animal neglect laws should get everyone's attention and still make sure that she doesn't take it out on Sean.

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Merlin,
What's Life Without A Little Magic!

I remember in 2nd grade I took a few poison dart frogs home. It was a while ago though, and I wasnt into herps and didnt know much, neither did the teacher. The frogs were kept in a small plastic container with kinda dirty water. There were about 4 of them I think and the container was about 6inches long and 4 inches wide. I dont know much about frogs, but there wasnt a heat source, and just water with no land or anything, and like I said I dont know much about the poison dart frogs but I know the cage wasnt very good.

Yeah, I'd definately refer the teacher to a good caresheet (we just happen to have one ). As said, igs should not be fed animal protein, to include insects. A green iguana really is a rather terrible choice for a classroom actually, but I hope they start taking better care of it instead of just dumping it somewhere or letting it die.

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"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." - John Benfield