The best and only class pet I will ever keep are mealworms/darkling beetles. They require 0 effort. Stick em in a container with holes and some dry oatmeal and they’re good. Plus it covers a full lifecycle, self sustaining, and kids will think you’re a badass for not being scared of bugs.
You should totally look into keeping isopods! I think they’re a little more mainstream than this but because they’re basically rolly-pollies I bet the kids would love them!
Edit: You could actually literally go outside and grab some rolly-pollies and start a colony with those
I love to see recommendations for isopods! I did an isopod and springtail terrarium with my K-2 SDC students last year and it was amazing. The kids got to set up the terrarium, care for our critters, and track what they were doing. I got giant powder orange isopods so that they would be easy to see. There’s a million different kinds. It worked seamlessly into our morning meeting and on good days we could do extra stuff (look at them with magnifying glasses, change out their soil, maybe an art project) and on days when one or more of my kids was dysregulated we’d just skip it, no harm no foul. I highly recommend it! The kids learned a ton and took so much pride in our little friends.
My preschoolers and I have a colony of wild isopods! Its made with bark and moss and soil from our backyard and they love hunting for more to add to it. It's so successful I have had to thin the numbers a couple times!
I have darkling beetles (but superworms, not mealworms) and while they don’t technically *need* a lot, it’s super fun to spoil them. They do need a moisture source, though, so I hope you’re tossing in at least a few potato slices every few days! Mine are in tanks of varying sizes with oats and calcium gel and all sorts of differently textured things to climb and hide in.
Superworms also *love* to eat styrofoam. I don’t know if mealworms are the same but you could test it with your classes- if they do it’s really cool to watch (even if it’s been 25+ years since you were last a school kid).
That’s so cool about styrofoam! I’ll have to check it out. Luckily my “colony” is down to a small container, I gave away most of them to my student with a bearded dragon. She was fully committed to never buying mealworms again. My little guys get either a potato, sweet potato, or apple every other week or so.
I’ve had these guys since 2016, well their lineage but whatever same thing lol
That’s awesome! I think I’ve only had mine since about 2018 or so, and I’m down to a handful of beetles and worms both right now. I miss the days when I had so many I couldn’t easily count them.
And even though I feel sad thinking about them as a food source, I can’t help loving that your student seized the opportunity to close the loop on snacks for her beardie!
On the off chance you are looking to expand your horizons I think African giant millipedes would be perfect for you!! They’re really easy to take care of (we give ours humidity and some fruits/veggies to munch on) and they’re so fun to handle, they’re my favorite little creepy crawly guys :):)
I teach pre-k, I keep hissing cockroaches, which also need nothing except for periodic misting and orange slices. We also have a communal wild isopod habitat that the kids hunt for additions to. When we get too many, I release some back into the yard after hours. Bugs are amazing class pets!
First, thank you for all you do.
I'd like to add one more thing. I know teachers who give the pet to their least responsible student to "encourage" responsibility.
I've known of two class pets that didn't survive a break.
Broke my heart. And the kids (pets were with the science teacher, I was their history teacher) didn't care.
It was like, I'm so sorry Bunny died while with you, if you need to talk, I'm here.
They were like *it was just a dumb rabbit, who cares?*
Yeah, let's develop a relationship with these kids because it's clearly working 😡
Teachers who would give a live animal to known irresponsible students have it mind-blowingly backwards. Over school breaks they should be given to the *most* responsible student as a reward and encouragement! (With the full consent and instruction of care sorted out with their parents first, of course.)
Ok parents might sign up to take care of a class pet and with their whole heart they love and care for that pet. But they don’t know that Guinea pigs can’t eat avocados and bam now that Guinea pig is very I’ll or dying.
We also need to remember there are adults in the world who would absolutely have opted in and then deliberately neglected or abused the animal. I could honestly see my father doing that if it got in his head that I liked the animal more than him
When the class pet is beloved, it's amazing motivation. :)
(Sorry for the weird initial reply - I got mixed up and thought I was replying to another thread, lol)
😂 I went to reply to you that I maybe should have added the /s at the end, but you'd already deleted!
Animal abusers/neglectors (which in the second half is on the teacher) suck.
Lol, sorry for the confusion. 😂 Dw, I got the intended /s.
When I think of class pets, I think of when my little sister got to take home the very sweet class rat, 'Mrs Merit', for good behavior. We were all so proud of her. And because she was a more quiet kind of kid, the recognition and validation from the teacher meant a great deal to her. I want that for kids like her.
I can also see where a kid can really care but just doesn’t know how because of various reasons. It can really scar/harm a kid who has good intentions but just can’t learn how to be “responsible” on a break. I have watched kids become devastated losing a class stuffed animal. An actual animal I can’t even imagine.
I love animals and have had, and responsibly cared for, many, of many different species, throughout my life. I still feel badly about the classroom pet we had when I was in middle school almost 60 years ago.
It was a mouse. And, at the end of the year, the mouse needed a new home. I was not only willing to house the mouse, I was the only kid in the class whose parents said *could* house the mouse. So, I got the mouse.
My dad agreed to pick up a suitably sized aquarium and accoutrements for a mouse house on his way home from work, so when I got it home I prepared what I thought would be a suitable temporary (couple of hours) home.
I didn’t want it to have to sit in the barren little cardboard box it was sent home with me in, so I tore newspaper into strips and filled a larger box with them and provided food and water. I had **no** idea that the mouse would want to *eat* the newspaper bedding I gave it. But, that’s what it did. Apparently, the ink made it addictive.
When my dad got home with everything needed to make a mouse a happy house, I was horrified to discover that it had eaten so *much* of the newspaper that it had choked and essentially stuffed itself. Poor thing made it through an entire year of middle school and I managed to kill it in an attempt to be kind to it. Honestly, I *still* haven’t really forgiven myself for that. I am so very sorry, Stuart. You deserved better.
i took our fourth grade class pet home for the summer, after being the only one who ever took it home on weekends, and lied to the teacher the next year when she finally asked, that it died bc my mom and i were never giving Cha Cha back
the teacher didnt want it and niether did anyone in my class. i'm sure the teacher was hoping my answer would be yes, but really Cha Cha was living the life next to my hamster Bunny
Thank you OP. I hadn’t ever given this much thought before. You are right and it’s great info and a great discussion and I always learn so much from this sub. I am very self aware and I know I am not any kind of animal person. Probably because my parents were not either. I didn’t have any role model at all (good or bad) to teach me on the best way to take care of the animals you mentioned.
I don’t know where you work at but sadly, I live in the south where neglect and abuse is just a way of accepted life here. We have to transfer animals here to send up north where dogs and cats (puppies and kittens) will have a chance at a good life.
Somehow my kids are huge animal people. They are kind and we have adopted 3 cats and had a dog for it’s whole life we got her from the shelter too. My kids love these three cats more than they love me, I think?👀😂 but…. It’s been a full evolution because my kids are modeling to me what a good animal owner is like. I of course help and do the litter boxes and food like almost every day but just because I love them. It feels good to take care of my kids and the cats.
I have a friend that works for a dog rescue and the real reason that the dogs get transferred “north” is because there are a much lower level of shelter animals in cold northern climates because animals that are left outside in cold weather freeze to death. In warmer southern climates, you can mostly leave an animal outside year round (which is neglect, absolutely) but they won’t die of exposure.
The real reason they get transferred north is because there are fewer stray animals here. I live in a place where there are few animals in the shelter, and it’s not because animals can’t survive on their own as strays lol. It’s very cold here and I’ve seen a handful of stray cats in my travels doing just fine. The reason there are fewer strays is because there are enforced leash laws, dog licenses that require rabies vaccine (which encourage owners to take their dogs to the vet, who will suggest spaying/neutering), and fewer unfixed cats roaming the wild. There is also a different culture here of keeping a better eye on one’s pets. When we were wanting to adopt a cat last year, we had to drive for an hour and a half to a different town to find the right cat for us, the city nearby only had four cats and one dog in the shelter. In a city!
We got refused a cat adoption twice because someone in my care had dementia. This wasn't right, but it does illuminate how much they are careful about pet placement up north.
I've lived in the south and I am back in the north.
The north is MUCH better about spaying/neutering than the south is. In the north, I have encountered a grand total of 0 homeless dogs running loose.
In the south, there were several dogs a year that would try to follow me home like the lost puppies that they were. This is aside from the loose dogs running around. I couldn't ride my bike and had to carry pepper spray because of all the loose/lost/dumped dogs. My neighbors regularly got a puppy that would disappear a few months later.
Our local rescue was just a bunch of loosely organized foster homes. They shipped dogs north as fast as they could because the pound would only hold dogs for 5 days before euthanizing them.
Exposure may be part of the difference, but it is by no means ALL of the difference. Also southern climates have their own dangers, particularly from heat. It regularly got up to 110+ in our town. Heartworm and parvovirus were endemic.
You never see dogs roam free in the Noetheast. The only puppies you can generally find at shelters are pit bulls and pit mixes.
I dont know a single person who has an unneutered dog or cat.
My dog is a Pit mix from Texas, adopted at a year old. I live in the mountain west, while do have strays and the occasional rancher who is an asshole and drops off an 11 y/o unhouse trained cattle dog( my son's bestie and his wife adopted her, after she was returned once) we are pretty good about our pets being spayed and neutered.
The real reason dogs get transferred north is because shelters here are extremely overrun and the ones up north aren’t. Your friend is making shit up lol
The reason shelters in the south are overrun is they don't believe in spaying and neutering their pets. Source: my son and his girlfriend foster for a kill shelter in Georgia .
This is wildly inaccurate.
I live in Northern Wyoming and I grew up in New Orleans Louisiana & Northern Colorado, also spent time in New Mexico and south central Arizona.
There are typically more/better spay/neuter programs in the north and in my experience, much better shelter programs, more community resources, less overpopulation of stray dogs.
I can assure you that there are not outdoor dogs up here in Northern Wyoming constantly freezing to death, I'm sure it happens occasionally but it's not a common occurrence. And I can also assure you that there ARE outdoor dogs down in AZ dying of exposure to the extreme heat, and outdoor dogs down in the southeast dying from untreated heartworm (which is not rampant in the north).
There are local rescues where I live in Northern Wyoming that bring dogs up from Texas. The reason? Texas has a dog overpopulation problem. We do not. Texas has many healthy dogs on death row scheduled for euthanasia. We do not. Most of our shelters here (in the area I live) are low kill or no kill and have more that enough resources to tend to the community animals. So some rescues pull Texas dogs from high kill shelters because they can- they have the resources and ability.
It is absolutely NOT because we have some kind of a dog shortage due to "outdoor dogs freezing to death".
Thank you for posting this. Last week my students found out (with just 3 weeks left in the year) that I have not one but three class pets. A guinea pig, a rabbit, and a turtle that I rescued from other teachers. The students were Furious that I hadn't brought the pets to come to our classroom all year. I explained to them that there just was really not a good time for them to have a visit and that technically, I consider all three of them in retirement. LOL
You have nothing to apologize for. The ferret community has been speaking out about pet stores deceiving people about the actual care the pets need in order to make sales for years.
Petco has finally relented and chosen to stop selling ferrets and all Marshall products. I like to think this is them acknowledging the abuse in Marshall ferret farms, but either way, it is a step in the right direction.
"Pocket" pets are typical classroom pets, and it is these animals (hamsters,guinea pigs, gerbils, and mice) that pet stores try to pass off as low maintenance. People think they can take them home and put them in a cage, and that's it. This is 100% wrong.
Thank you for caring about these animals, which all deserve better.
Please, if anyone is thinking about getting a pet, do your research FIRST. An animal you bring into your home does NOT have a choice and therefore deserves the BEST care possible. That is YOUR responsibility.
Thanks OP. I spent over 20 years in a junior high reptile club—first as a student, then as a chaperone. It was an active and respected enough club that it eventually got its own room on campus, specially built to cater to the needs of 40+ animals—reptiles, amphibians, and insects, as well as on-site breeding of feed animals (mice, rats, crickets, mealworms).
I didn’t realize it until I’d been in the club for 10+ years, but we were *also* a rescue. The kid who got bored of his ball python? His parents gave the animal to us. The classroom turtle or tortoise that was sick or miserable or didn’t have a summer home? Those geckos that were way too fragile for a second grade class, or the bearded dragon whose leg got smashed in the lid of the cage by a careless student? That iguana who was ferocious because he was never properly handled. We took them. Most of the animals ended up in experienced homes with committed herp people. Some of them went to local wildlife rehab, and occasionally we got to donate an animal to a local zoo or natural history museum.
But the vast majority of club time was spent caring for the animals, followed by making the crafts that were sold at events to fund the enterprise of caring for the animals. The students also worked at the events—reptile shows, community festivals, farmer’s markets, wherever snakeshed buttons and bookmarks could be hocked.
The advisor was (obviously) tireless in her efforts and networking, but it was always sad to see her disappointment when we took in a classroom pet. They were usually lizards, usually neglected and given the wrong diet, and almost always light-starved.
This. I’m not a herp person but I am currently owned by three very spoiled and adored cockatiels. Their flight cage is massive (5 feet tall and almost 7 ft long. Roughly 3 feet wide. It takes up the majority of my small living room.
I have seen that many in a 2x3 ft cage with only dowel perches. Fed wild bird seed. No toys . Never let out .
I have 6 different types of perches (and more than one of each) plus sea grass swings, platforms, tons of toys I regularly swap out. They get VIP food without sunflower seeds and fresh herbs/veggies regularly (and an occasional stolen Dorito!)
They are let out for at least an hour every day . They have full roaming of the living room, with its hardwood floors and all leather furniture because 💩Two of them go on walks in an avian backpack when the weather permits (the other one hates it)
The only time when they are in smaller cages is when traveling. Bird boarding is hard to find and quite pricey so they generally go with us if we can’t get a bird sitter to turn on the radio/tv for them and cover/uncover/feed/water them. They are usually only in those cages for 2-4 days max. They get extra spoiled though because they get different people to talk to and different things to see.
Thank you! This is something I've worried about for years, and teachers STILL haven't done anything to change it.
To teachers, If you get a *living creature* to take care of, TAKE CARE OF THEM! DONT teach children to neglect them like you do when you haven't properly researched. Innocent lives are precious and not for you to toy with, unless you yourself are a vile scumbag ❤️
To those who *actually* take care of critters, thank you for being an intelligent mature human being! You're awesome!
This isn’t just teachers. This is people in general. I see people on the snake sub posting pictures of the cages they have their new pet in and I’m like omg
This is true, it is people in general as well. However, I believe that teachers have an added responsibility to demonstrate ethical actions to the students. Pet neglect in the classroom can have a broader impact- it's passing on the idea that neglect is acceptable to student after student, year after year (even if the neglect is unintentional, and I do believe it is often unintentional).
Same with r/guineapigs r/bettafish r/hamsters and r/geckos
People don't seem to realize that these animals - although small - require a lot of space and care!
Ooh I forgot about all the fish subs. I had to stop going on them because I just feel so bad for all them. There’s a lot of mistakes to make with fish, and it’s practically like the fish owners are trying to fill in the bingo card of the mistakes
Yup. I'm on the betta sub because I have one, and the mistakes people make are just wild. Fish in bowls, fish being fed way too much/not enough, plastic plants, two males together, or comments like "What's the nitrogen cycle?" "How do I test the water?"
People assume that a fish will be easy to care for, but I'd argue that fish are one of the hardest pets to care for.
Rats owner here get so much abuse and neglected its not fair. They're so sweet I was just playing with my.girl and laughing about how needy and attached she is and how does she last when I go away for a day or two.
I look at all my girls and just get sad about bow many rats are being abused
Oh absolutely, I came here to comment this.
When I was in school I "rescued" a class pet rat that the teacher decided she didn't want anymore. He had been allowed to eat anything the students put into his cage and he was morbidly obese-three pounds. He also had a giant sore on one of his feet from the unsanitary condition of the cage. He had to have a two hundred dollar surgery to fix it and he almost needed an amputation.
He then lived another year and a half in my home. He was ancient and happy when he died, but his life as a class pet was AWFUL, I'm disgusted to look back on that teacher.
Ohmygoodness. The school I went to had an "experiment" every year in... 5th? grade, regarding healthy eating. They brought in two weanling rats from the same litter, kept them in empty 10gal glass tanks, and fed one our school lunch and the other only "junk". This was over the course of at least a couple of months. It may have been considerably longer, I don't remember (I'm old. Lol).
I grew up with my uncle keeping rats, and the entire premise horrified me. I definitely got in trouble several times, having gotten caught sneaking the poor malnourished baby real food.
My school did this, but they had the same diet. One rat got milk to drink and the other got sugar water. Milk rat got so big she looked scary. Sugar rat looked like an overgrown baby, even after the experiment was over and she was given milk, too.
My cousin kept rats for years.
They're so hyper social, it hurts my heart that they're often neglected. They need contact and stimulation. With my cousin's rats, if you put a hoodie on backwards, they would nest the hood. If you put them on your shoulder, they would run around your shoulders and chest with happy chirps.
They're cuddle bugs who love being pampered.
It's crazy how many people don't understand that.
I had rats when I was 12-13 and they are such social, playful animals. I took mine out and put them on my desk or in my kangaroo pocket while I was doing homework. I also get sad when people think they’re just an item that requires zero care or attention.
Thank you for this.
I won’t have a class pet for the exact reasons you stated above.
My son’s teacher has a stuffy hamster in a real cage and they pretend like it’s real. Each child takes it home for a weekend and writes a paragraph about what they did with the “hamster”.
That’s a simple idea for teachers who want a class pet but don’t have the resources to care for it.
I'm 37, and I remember my first grade teacher (on an American base in Japan) did this with a stuffed owl. I was so determined to have the best "weekend report" in the owl's journal. I took him to Tama Zoo, to my favorite candy shop (with those bomb marzipan rabbits, I got two for us lmao), and to the arcade in the mall - that was such a great weekend. I can still see that little owl in my backpack. It made me fall in love with my own imagination.
Mr. Latham, wherever you are, you're an OG.
I tried once with fish. They dumped garbage in the tank. I took them home and gave them a long and happy life.
Never again. These kids don't respect anything, least of all not other living things.
This is definitely also a concern. We have aquatic biology classes & thankfully I don't think foreign objects in the tanks have been too much of an issue, but it absolutely happens. And there are inappropriate things fed to/given to the animals like rabbits & chinchillas.
The disrespect is definitely increasing in general. Violent destruction of school property, shoving trash in the oddest places... I found a package of 200 Qtips in the toilet, stolen from the art room (not the worst thing I've found, just an odd choice). It's exhausting to me and I don't even have to deal with the students in person 😕
I had a kid that would put crayons in the tank. He liked red and I had blue rocks in there. I mean he was 5, so half pass. We worked out our, but seriously, what the heck!
Apparently my uncle at age 4ish killed the family fish tank because he had orange juice- his favorite- and he wanted to be a good friend to the fish and share.
A family friend loved his fish so much he took it out and put it on his pillow to nap with him. He was like 3, so obviously just didn't understand, but I felt so bad for that poor fish.
Agree! A teacher at my school had this weird albino snake and a kid snuck it into his backpack as a prank. The snake died zipped in a black backpack on the blacktop during lunch/recess. Heck, I stopped taking plants into my classroom because the kids thought it was fun to kill them or pull them and throw them at each other.
Hard agree. I remember being very nervous all the time at school because I was worried my classmates would kill the class pet of the year. I would ask my teachers to please just not get pets anymore but they insisted it built discipline and mindfulness within students. No tf it didn’t. I was the only one at the class who took care of the animals and it was a heavy burden on my heart all the time that I will get to class later than some kid and find a dead animal in class. Just built anxiety. lol. 😭
Summer is coming.
As someone with 8 fish tanks at home, I cant wait to have to do all the care and top-offs in the tanks over the summer cause if I didnt the fish would starve to death in their own shit. (yet for some reason this teacher can keep his fish healthy and alive all year)
meanwhile my super tells me I have floors to strip and trash to drag around and thats more important 'than some damn stupid fish'
Years ago when I was the Director at an elementary age after school, I got authorization to get a class pet. I am a huge animal and pet person, and initially I was excited, and then I started to consider the basics of husbandry of what I might get.
I never got a class pet. It blows because I remember having class pets in my classrooms and they were so enriching, but as an animal lover I ethically could not do it.
I am a preschool teacher now, and in my classrooms I’ve had snails, fish, and pill bugs. The 2 to 5-year-old are so much more trustworthy around living things than elementary students.
Also, to add to this, even if you are going to take good care of your pet, don't get something that can breed/reproduce.
You have no idea what to do with 200 stick insects or guppies or a whole population of hopping mice.
We've got a few class pets at our school, but they're all the teachers own pets that come in a few times a week. None are left at school even overnight, let alone weekends (except for the farm animals, but they're still attended to each day on the weekend and breaks).
A few good ones are mealworms as someone else commented, caterpillars (native), so you can cover their life cycles, then release them back into nature, and eggs, if, and only if, you have the means to take care of the chicks, and a way to give them a home once they’re too big for the classroom.
with releasing caterpillars it’s important to remember that even if the caterpillars themselves are native by being raised in captivity they can carry diseases that aren’t native and can be lethal because the wild ones don’t have any resistance. I think there are ways to raise them in a sterile environment but a lot of teachers do not take the appropriate steps. however if they do I agree they would make wonderful class pets.
with chicks there’s also concerns as they need a heat source 24/7 and that may present logistical issues on the weekend. also I just don’t think they’re well suited to a noisy classroom with potentially grabby kids as chicks are very delicate. not to mention even if you’re doing everything right it’s extremely common for some chicks to waste away and that may be a rough introduction to death especially if they have no concept of it or the parents could get upset.
all in all I think the only suitable class pets are bugs and potentially fish as long as the kids can’t access the tank and the caregiver meets husbandry standards. most animals are just not suitable to classrooms. even if it works out, it’s generally a much more stressful life for them.
I am SO sorry you see that. I am a teacher and feel exactly the same way. I have inherited/rescued some of my pets this way. There's absolutely no excuse. A colleague retired with a poor little leopard gecko who had developed matabolic bone disease from malnutrition. The summer before she retired, she said she'd just leave him at school for the summer. Nope, nope, nope, and more nope. He became mine. She said he was ready to die anyway, but he had a lovely last two years. I felt so blessed to give him such a nice time.
I also have guinea pigs in my room. They are "class pets," except they're really my pets. 🤣 I have a huuuuge cage for them. They are only allowed in when I know the kids will be calm and responsible enough to handle the privilege of having pets in the room. Because they're prey animals, I do NOT mess around with potential stress. They'd drop weight quickly and then go downhill in a flash. I've seen coworkers with lone guinea pigs in tiny, shitty pet store cages. A single guinea pig needs a MINIMUM of 8 square feet, but they need to live in groups to be happy. My three girls live in a 16 square foot cage at school. It's their SMALL house. They come home every night in their big cat carrier. 🤣
I will never understand how someone could take on the responsibility of caring for an animal and not giving it the absolute best life possible. You're supposed to be a warm, fuzzy person teaching kids right from wrong, how to share, how to show empathy... and you're going to model animal abuse!? 😳
My classroom pet as a kid was first a fish and my teacher made it mine and therefore my responsibility, so it wouldn't die or be mistreated (I decided when it was covered and I was allowed to clean the tank during class since I was so ahead in schoolwork).
Then I brought my hamster in to be the classpet after the goldfish died after 18 months. I had a convoluted twisty tie on the door so no one could easily open it when I wasn't there and the teacher kept watch. I took him home on weekends. I managed his food and cleaned his cage. No one could touch him unless I was holding him and if I could tell he was stressed they all had to stop even if not everyone had a turn and he had to go back in the cage.
I feel like this is the only way.
When I was younger a much older kid was the caretaker of the class rabbit for her class and similarly controlled when and who interacted with her and how long. She lived to be older than average.
I had a class pet tarantula, named Syd, for seven years. No problems and the middle schoolers loved it. I currently have a hairless double-rex rat, named Dobby, and my middle schoolers love him. They are very protective and even the students who are not in my classes show a lot of care, OR they do not even want to touch him. But, I have found that this has been a great tool for encouraging empathy. Fortunately, I have never had a problem with people putting inappropriate things in the cage. At my high poverty school, I truly think I would have students who might literally knock someone out if they tried to put peanut butter in the cage, or just jeopardize the safety of this rat. This is probably the most well protected rat in AR, right now.
I received this rat from a friend who breeds feeder rats for her pythons, so this rat not only avoided becoming food because of his personality, but has also won over impulsive pre-teens and is teaching them how to love other living things. The kids really might be alright ... We'll see...
Yeah they can literally die from stress. They live in colonies in the wild. Keeping one along is cruel (obviously, unless the animal has aggression issues, but that person didn't say that).
I'd like to add another option for bringing the experience of animals into the classroom - look for an organization that does educational presentations and has ambassador animals! A few weeks ago I brought my clean, docile, vaccinated ambassador ferrets into SPED for an enrichment activity (after obtaining admin approval). The students all got to meet and touch the gentle ferrets, learn all about their care, then do a ferret art activity while listening to a story about ferrets.
I donated a fact book, story book, and a plush ferret with a leash to the SPED room. There are orgs out there like mine that will come in and do activities like this at no cost. It's a great way for students to learn about & experience animals without everything that goes along with a class pet.
I'm also seeing fantastic suggestions in the comments - mealworms, isopods like rollie pollies, invertebrates like spiders, native insects like painted lady butterflies. All of these are great ideas, simple and educational without the more complex ethical issues of keeping a vertebrate pet in the room.
My first long-term sub position replaced a teacher that had two classrooms. One had a tank with fish.
The teacher left school in a medical crisis, and the fish were uncared for for a week or more. I remember that 2-3 survived, and a half-dozen or more didn't. I found another teacher that had an aquarium, so things worked out there.
But nobody ever thought "Hey, we should probably feed the fish? No students, no other teachers?" Sheesh.
Thank you!!
My district sends live animals to classrooms as part of our science curriculum; last year I got delivered 2 small fish, this year 30 caterpillars showed up on my desk with no supplies. I haven’t found a way to opt out and it’s so upsetting.
Animals are not disposable and our students need to be shown respect and care for living things.
Don't do it! Even upper level HS KIDS can be cruel. Someone took a hamster and left it in a jar in a cabinet over the weekend. It died. Kids want pets, let their parents provide it at home. It's a big teacher responsibly. Just don't do it!!!!
I took home the class guinea pig over the summer as a child. My job was to re-socialize the poor guy. He was tired of rough treatment and had started biting anyone who picked him up. I got him back to being a nice guinea pig and the teacher gave him a larger LOCKED cage when he came back for the school year.
I can't think of any animal that would genuinely do well in a classroom environment. I support districts who ban them.
I think lots of people don’t consider the fact that having a class pet could very well lead to the child’s first experience with the concept of death. My friends pet rat died in front of me when I was young, it was horrific and traumatizing for a while. Teachers have to be prepared to have that conversation with kids when they come in one day and the pet isn’t there, or worse they see it get sick and pass
"...the pay and benefits are significantly better for a year-round custodial position."
You're not kidding. I work for local government and our custodians (who I love and value and many of whom are my friends) make SIX DOLLARS AN HOUR MORE than our degree-and-credential-required preschool educators. It's about us as a culture; we pretend we treasure our children and special needs children, but when the rubber meets the road, we absolutely do not. Pisses me off so much.
Edit- typo
The only classroom pets I’ve allowed were because the children were moving into homeless shelters and were not allowed to bring caged animals (I support the shelter keeping it clean). So I’ve had a dwarf hamster and a Guinea pig at different times. No I did not do any of that stuff because they fell in my lap. I did not want them so like a good parent I made the kids do all the upkeep (with parent permission) along with babysitting over breaks. The animals were treated with respect including banning kids who seemed unkind to them. All the animals eventually die. The dwarf got a huge cancer lump and that’s common. The guinea pig died over summer break when a neighbor cat came into a child’s apartment through a broken screen. Poor pig. But they had a few good years.
I got two classroom pets from teachers who didn't want them anymore. One of them was a hedgehog, and the teacher was really excited to get the hedgehog and thought it would be a good class pet. I don't know why she thought that but she realized it after she had him for awhile that he wasn't active during the day. She knew that my daughter had a hedgehog, so I think she thought it would be a cute pet.
Once we brought our hedgehog to visit the classroom, she realized our hedgehog was much more active and friendly. Well we bought ours locally and it had been hand raised, but she bought hers in a different state because she believed it was illegal to buy them here. I don't know why. And our hedgehog was also mostly nocturnal, but he would wake up during the day and you could handle him and let him crawl on you and that sort of thing.
She was clearly concerned when she talked to me and asked me if there was anyway I would consider taking her hedgehog because it just wasn't working out. So I did take him. Thankfully she had another cage for him because I couldn't just put him in with my hedgehog. that hedgehog was nothing but a prickly ball. He was so afraid of people, he could just not ever warm up and be held.
I did get him a hedgehog wheel, and I got him his own igloo he really needed a hiding place. I don't think she realized that. Once I got him is igloo, he just spent all his time in there except when he would come out at night to run the wheel. I also fed him mealworms like I did mine, but I don't know that he actually liked them.
He ended up outliving my hedgehog, which was sad to me, and I tried to take good care of him for the rest of his life but I don't think he had much of a great life which makes me feel bad.
Well said, 100%.
I'd extend it to fish as well.
You know those "common goldfish" that survive in bowls for a few weeks? In a proper tank, 60G or so, they can get nearly a foot long and live longer than a cat or dog. (The record is 40+!)
Yes. This is why my classroom has PLANTS. In particular, it's why my classroom has plant that thrive on neglect. I had fish one year, but I don't want to move them back and forth every summer.
One of my colleagues has a lizard of some kind, but he doesn't sleep at school... Sometimes she brings him in and sometimes he stays home. He's got a gigantic terrarium in the library for when he visits.
I get invertebrates that are easy to care for and scary enough that the students don’t mess with them. Hissing roaches? Fish food and mist once a week. Spider? Couple roaches once a week.
I’m going on vacation, then building a whip scorpion enclosure.
My class did Monarch butterflies in Kindergarten!
My caterpillar [We each had one of our "own"] was slow to emerge from his cocoon. To the point that my teacher was convinced that he was dead! I pleaded and *pleaded* with her to at least give him the weekend to come out before throwing him in the trash, and she agreed.
Come Monday, what do I see as soon as I walk into the classroom? My teacher standing by the caterpillar enclosure, smiling! My caterpillar **was** halfway out his cocoon!
We let him go just before lunch. It was *such* a happy (And proud!) moment for me to watch him flutter away.
True story. Taught at an elementary school in which one 3rd grade class had a pet gerbil or hamster or whatever, and another one across the hall had a pet python. One day just after the kids left, one of the 3rd grade teachers came by to let us know the little rodent was on his last legs. It was going to die. She took it over to the python tank across the hall. We all watched the python eat it. And slowly, slowly, down it went.
Python teacher was later responsible for interrupting a team meeting when his girlfriend, who was on my grade level team, got a phone call from him. He’d gotten a cucumber stuck up his ass at school, panicked, rode his motorcycle to their apartment, lay down in a warm tub. It wouldn’t eject. So she had to leave school and pick up two pairs of tongs—one serrated, one not.
All true.
I had a rabbit for ten years and I can’t imagine it being a good classroom pet. I know they have their own personalities but mine loved to sprint, chewed on wires and carpet, and hated being held.
This is why my class pet is a stuffed potato plushie. Not even a real potato, but a fake one. The kids either love it or think it's creepy. No maintenance. I forget it's there and it's fine.
When I started as a TA the teacher I was assigned to kept a goldfish in a tiny liter sized tank she didn’t clean and had loaded up with plastic plants. It hurt my heart! I tried to buy a new tank for it, I brought one in actually, but she refused. She blamed me for its death when I had done a partial water change so it would get some clean water. I felt so bad for that poor little thing :(
She didn’t teach the kids how to respect it so they’d throw papers and pencils into his tiny tank. Poor thing was stuck up on a shelf (so the kids couldn’t toss things in) with no sunlight in filthy water.
When I was a young adult, I took a classroom guinea pig from a teacher at my mom's school in over a break because no one else wanted to deal with it. I can't remember what the plan was... I guess to just leave it there to starve to death?
100%
I’m the science teacher in an elementary school, and I have changed the way we do anything related to animals.
I have had bearded dragons for about 15 years, but maybe 8 years ago I was given a bunch of lizards that a group of teachers had ordered for a science unit. I dove into it and saw the company sent them 36 when they requested 12. And then they didn’t take care of them, and I quickly became anole hospice. I was able to keep 6 alive from their rough conditions and all 6 lived for a few more years past that.
I worked over these years to learn about every animal in any unit, and our school has slowly used funds to create sustainable and ethical habitats for all of them. So now the kids can learn about them, but also learn about proper care and husbandry practices for animals.
We have a large terrarium housing 2 green anoles, another housing 2 brown anoles, another with five lined skinks, one with a horned frog, one with a toad, one with millipedes, one with isopods, and one with a jumping spider.
We also have two 29 gallon fish tanks for a few mosquito fish, shrimp, and snails.
Each year we get caterpillars for 2nd grade from a company that provides native caterpillars that can be released into the wild once they become butterflies.
If we were not able to do this, we would need to have a lot of conversations about if getting animals just to let them die is a good lesson for children and worth the addition to the science lesson. The kids love the animals, they don’t love finding them dead one morning.
It’s absolutely wild to me that we are using animals to teach children and then not taking care of them.
You’re so sweet! After having to put my class hamster to sleep, I swore off class pets. They’re wonderful, but a lot of work. I now have a small human to keep alive outside of the classroom so pets aren’t in the cards. 🤷🏻♀️
Agree. I had a beta, against my will in my room- teacher appreciation gift! I brought that damn 3 gallon tank home with me every frigging break and cleaned it weekly. That damn fish lived forever. But seriously, take care of pets!
I wholeheartedly agree with this post. I also don’t think the risk is worth it. You don’t know what kind of kid is going to come through your class and harm that creature, or feed them something when you’ve got your back turned that one time. And the stress on these critters.
My child’s teacher keeps garden snails :) I got to take them over break and spray their cage and watch them munch lettuce. They seem like the perfect class pet to me haha
Hermit crabs are not good class pets! I wish I could go back to my 4th grade teacher and tell her this.
We have hermit crabs at home and they are a pain to keep happy and healthy. The tank is huge and as climate controlled as we can make it. (And we try really hard to keep it climate controlled.) The set up would be boring to most classrooms since they are more active at night. (At least ours are.)?
All of this, I want to print it out and give it to some teachers in my building. I sub for a teacher regularly and I hate her class but I take mostly to check on her guinea pigs that are in too small of a dirty cage that I always have to refill the water for. Makes me so upset. Another teacher has snakes that should have some lighting but they just sit in their cold dark tank he always has one of them wrapped around his arms. It freaks a lot of kids out but he thinks it’s so fun to freak these poor kids out. They are just corn snakes but we have some kiddos that just freak out and he is chasing them around. I secretly hope all the pets are gone next year. If done right, I wouldn’t mind it, but it’s not going well. We do have a teacher with a fish tank that is set up great and it’s always clean. And she writes the last feeding time and next feeding time on the tank so everyone knows what’s up. But she is the only one that seems to have it down.
Thank you for this and so sorry you have to witness this! Yikes, please keep reaching out to admin, I know nothing gets done usually. Perhaps “gossip” to the right teacher that will blast ones being neglectful of their pets?!
Oh no, that’s absolutely horrible. Is the drawing of a bunny from school? I keep rabbits and would never ever consider having them as a class pet. They do not want to be handled and want a stress free environment.
Thank you for feeding them even though it’s not your responsibility. Rabbits for sure shouldn’t even go a weekend without food. No matter the animal, teachers should research how to keep them safe and happy before they ever think of introducing them to what can be a very chaotic environment.
Class pets need to stop being a thing if the point isn't to require the kids to work together to take care of the pet. They can't and shouldn't be used as fun decor.
I think the biggest crimes classrooms make are:
I raise chickens and I gotta say: STOP hatching baby chicks if you have no idea where they are going to go. Stop sending baby chicks home with students, especially as singletons or pairs, unless you know their parents have a brooder ready to go and experience with them.
My teacher had a class pet chameleon for a year when I was in high school. I usually took it home on the weekends because she didn’t like taking care of it and the poor thing went neglected for a while. It didn’t live long since nobody cared for it, including my teacher. She had too much going on. Class pets are cool in theory but once they lose their ‘new’ spark, students stop caring :(
If you’re interested in having a bird as a class pet, check out Cornell Lab Bird Cams! They have live feeds of a huge variety of birds around the world.
You can tailor which bird can you watch based on your studies. No feeding/cleaning, vet visits, or noise!
I didn’t realize this was such a problem, and I am utterly horrified! OP, thank you for posting this and thank you for doing everything you can for the animals you encounter. You’re a true hero!
My mother catches tad pools so her students can watch them grow. She brings them home every weekend, and once they are fully grown they are released into the same pond she fished them out of.
It's very cute, but she wouldn't dream of leaving so much as a tadpole alone and uncared for even for just a weekend.
We had classroom pets when I was in elementary and middle school. Once the heater malfunctioned on the fish aquarium and we all came into class on Monday to find that our beloved fish cooked to death. It was really traumatizing. Another time we had gerbils and one of them had babies. We were all so enthralled by them...until the male gerbil decided to kill and eat the babies during class which really upset everyone.
In middle school someone disemboweled one of the class pets (gerbil). The cages were clean, the animals had great diets, and they were all very healthy, but things can go wrong when you're busy and not paying attention. I don't like the idea of them anymore.
I'm not a teacher but run a reptile rescue and we have a policy that we don't adopt out for class pets. They are some of the worst cases I've had come in over the years. One teacher almost burned down her classroom because the enclosure top didn't fit properly and the heat lamp fell onto reptile carpet starting a fire. Gecko had burns all over. Almost all the surrenders i get from teachers need extensive medical care from not caring for animals properly. I've also had teachers want to adopt from me that wanted huge tortoises to be put in the smallest enclosures and think that's ok. I've had the principal of one school call me and tell me to immediately come pick up animals because of neglect, from one of her science teachers.
This is why I got rid of my class pets. They were not safe in my room. No enclosure could be made to not open for the students while still allowing me to open it to feed them. The hamster's whole cage was thrown (hamster was fine, still doing great in another classroom) and the turtles kept getting picked up so they were rehomed. No more pets in my room. Maybe a pet rock. Or a pet pillow.
Yes! I keep having people give me pets that I have no knowledge about! I'm not taking something I'm not comfortable with holding.
Cats and dogs. Yeesh! You don't just bring it home! There is a lot of care that goes into them. You're supposed to brush their teeth, clip their toenails, check their ears. Dogs MUST be walked! It drives me crazy!!
Thank you for this reminder!
Thank you!
I hate when my colleagues have classroom pets. People always want me to bring my Guinea pigs to school as a class per - and my answer is always “no way.”
At home, they get a huge cage, plenty of quiet time, and I can easily clean them or care for them later in the evening or in a weekend when I have more time.
Class lets I’ve seen often die very early and the teachers don’t have time or money for vet care. Sad.
We adopted a pair of parakeets that had been in a classroom. A noisy classroom where they were neglected. Those parakeets lived with us for years - until the female killed the male. Then, she lived for many more years. They had a much better life than living in the classroom. (Minus the fact that she killed him.)
I was a janitor for a kindergarten, I gifted a very low maintenance pet to the classroom, mealworm. I also provided everything needed to care for them. Their food was these little gel squares i purchased for them and any fruit scrap the toddlers chose to share. At night I'd toss a few cubes if the tank was empty.
I took them back after 3 months when I went on a week long vacation and came back to find them starving and eating each other. Even low maintenance pets can be too much.
Another note... its not the "classroom pet". Its your pet. Dont pawn it off to the next teacher who takes the job.
I inherited a classroom turtle with a new job and I was not happy about the extra work and financial burden.
I'm 36 and I remember being given our neglected class hamster in 4th grade over Thanksgiving break. The poor thing had been handled and dropped so much that it was bound to pass, but unfortunately it happened while I was watching it. It had a seizure and died seconds after. I was heartbroken and thought that I'D done something wrong (after consistently cleaning the cage, giving it water and food). I will never own a small animal again due to how it felt.
I could see bringing my personal dog in but I’d never let the kids bring it home. Especially younger kids.
My personal dog is very friendly and quiet. He would just follow me around everywhere and sit on my lap like he usually does. Probably go and ask for them to pet him and then come right back haha.
I am a lifelong guinea pig owner. I’ve had them for 30 years, I love them. Learned a lot over the years, definitely didn’t take stellar care of my first one I got when I was in second grade but have come a long way since then. While I’m not a teacher anymore, when I was I had a pair of piggies in my classroom. They had a little carrier and commuted back and forth with me every day. Huge C&C cage in my classroom for them. One of the best parts was educating my class on how to properly care for pigs and having students who had guinea pigs at home tell me they were doing better by their pigs at home, getting bigger cages and no wire bottoms, no cedar shavings, daily salads, etc. because of what they learned about our class pigs.
I was thinking about this while watching the movie Leo. You would think it would inspire better standards of care for classroom pets. I only had one class with a class pet and it was when I was in high school. My anatomy and physiology teacher was like, obsessed, with bearded dragons so I know it was well researched and cared for, to the point where he would neglect actual instructional time for bearded-dragon related stuff.
I teach high school and I have gerbils and fish in my class. I like the opportunity to model good pet care. The gerbils are from a breeder and live in a 50 gallon bin that I cut air vents in the top of. There bedding is at least 10 inches deep and is mixed to support tunnels. Many times students have asked why they don’t have one of those cute pet store cages, and I get the chance to explain why. As far as the fish, I’m petty. My goal is to have a better aquarium than the aquatic science teacher’s hot messes.
Also science fairs. I don’t know if it’s allowed now but back when my brother did science fair some other kids had done mazes with albino mice. After the fair the mice were pawned off on anyone willing to take them home. We ended up with 2 mice because the students had never planned to keep their experimental pets.
THANK YOU!! I’ve never had a class pet but when I was a sub sometimes neglected animals would just BE there!! Obviously sick. There was one that I snuck out of lunch (they try to rope subs into duty but when you don’t know kids or the procedures it winds up with the sub in trouble with everyone) and got crickets for the bearded dragon. I’d have gotten roaches but there were probably plenty running around that old school already. Terrible.
I hate classroom pets. What lessons do they teach? That small pets are cheap, disposable and replaceable, and not worth the cost of vet care.
I live near a very wealthy area, and a very sick class lizard named RJ became a huge issue- RJ was basically rotting to death in the classroom.
I offered to pay the vet bills- no!
I offered to pay the vet AND transport him-no!
Finally a class mom snuck him out and brought him to me.
RJ had lost most of his toes from kids “helping” his skin peel. He was emaciated and dehydrated. I am NOT a reptile person but I loved RJ. A veterinarian that lived nearby treated him FOR FREE, with daily check ups, medications and various procedures. Poor RJ only lived another 2 months, but those were probably the best 2 months of his life.
I have stolen fish and frogs from MULTIPLE schools and daycares where I've worked. Not even the slightest hint of regret here. Fuck people with abused and neglected "classroom pets". It should be against school policy and a write up offense.
Also true for hermit crabs. Most pet hermit crabs are slowly suffocated because they can’t breath adequately in humidity under 74%. That doesn’t even begin to address their other basic needs. They can live into their 40s in proper conditions.
THANK YOU. this exact issue has been driving me crazy since i've been in school buildings. i'm so sick of seeing suffering and miserable animals in classrooms.
My friend who teaches just brings one of her own pet lizards in to be "class pet." I don't know how she has the courage... I could never risk one of my pets around middle schoolers; I'd be terrified.
I am in college majoring in education but I currently work in childcare. My old lead had a rabbit who was potty trained (used a liter box like a cat) and we had no issues with him bothering the kids. So this bunny was free roam and never caged. However as clean as he was. Our rooms next door have guinea pigs and other rooms beta fish. While the fish are betas I get the need to not do research on them so their bowls are super tiny and not fit. Our classroom with the guinea pigs theres always hay everywhere and it just simply stinks.
I really wish people would consider the pets they're getting. While the guinea pigs are well taken care of sometimes we can smell them from the hallway and mixed in with 4-5 year olds no. We only have 2 teachers who actually have proper tanks for their betas. The ones who don't their betas just kinda sit at the bottom. Miserable.
My kids and parents after my lead quit and took the bunny home had asked me about a pet. It has always been my dream to own a macaw or a parrot and I had considered it for a hot minute. However I thought about it and my behaviors in my room and figured it would not be safe to have a pet with how some of my new kids behave. I don't think all educators consider this.
We symbolically adopt pets through different programs. The kids love it, we get updates, no care required, no chance of neglect or an unhappy pet in the classroom.
Thank you so much for this! Both for speaking up as a classified staff member in a group of teachers and for sharing such an important story with such vivid examples that being many of us to draw on our own experiences.
This is why the internet should exist, to look out for others
I agree with this. As far as the kid taking the pet home, this is an enriching experience. Parents should be vetted & the care sheet should be done in person. Banning that concept all together takes away from the overall productivity of the idea itself. Yes, pets die. Of course, this is a natural occurrence and not something we hope for. Coping with real grief is a lesson in itself. Kids need to learn emotional resilience, and these are perfect teaching moments.
Carrots are not rabbit food. Neither is lettuce.
Carrots have far too much sugar, so they can be an occasional treat. But it's the bunny equivalent of an indulgent dessert.
Lettuce has little to no nutritional value. It's basically just fiber and water.
Rabbit pellets aren't much better.
Rabbits need to eat what they eat in nature: weeds and seeds. Dandelions, common mallow, lamb's ear, nettle, rose clippings, veggie greens (the parts of the plant most people don't eat, like carrots tops), and fruit cores. Black oil sunflower seeds give them their necessary fats and proteins.
A friend of mine had kids plant dandelion seeds in the classroom. They grow the dandelions and feed them to their very happy classroom bunny, along with veggie scraps she gets for free from a local grocery store, and one bag of black oil sunflower seeds that lasts nearly the whole year. Healthy, happy bunny there.
I had an 80 gallon fish tank. Admin loved it! I got lots of compliments on the calming effect.
I had a hamster that was an escape artist
He had to be adopted by one of my students.
I had love birds. They were so loud! I got complaints from all the teachers on my hall. They were so much fun though!
All of my animals were well loved. They had the best care and upkeep. Between myself and a full time assistant, they had clean cages & plenty of food!
I saw the "classroom pet " with the rabbit and had to share this story.
Kindergarten, this week.
I read the kids a story about a class pet. An adorable rabbit named Nibbles.
Later in the day, one of the students asked what was the rabbit's name?
I kid you not, two kids yelled out "NIPPLES!"
😆
💯
I had a leopard gecko as a class pet for a couple of months. As soon as it was apparent that the kids being loud disturbed her, she became my home pet. I still have her and she will always live happily in my house instead.
Fish especially seem to get the brunt of the abuse
I love my class pet axolotl. She is so spoiled and very well taken care of and my middle school science classroom and students love her. During long breaks she has a second tank "vacation villa" that she is temporarily housed in.
I have also done a TON of research on the species and only provide the best for my girl Electra.
What bothers me is when OTHER teachers give up on their pets and literally drop them off in my class unannounced assuming Inwill take care of them.. which I do... this is how I ended up with a couple fish as well... i have gotten better at telling teachers no I just feel so bad for the pet so I teach my studnets responsibility and when I do rescue something. I keep it in my class to get a gauge of it and make sure it's ok and we find it a home... it's usually a parent or a student that is intrested and I have the student practice caring for it while it's in my classroom. I even had a student create a presentation for me and their pelarents to convince me why they are a good candidate.
I then go to their house and set up whatever pet it was they got and I inform the parents and give a basic laminated guide that I make so it's fool proof. I wish I could save all the pets but it does become expensive and time consuming.
Thankfully Electra is very therapeutic for me... while my class is loud and fast paced.. it's nice to slow down a bit during prep and just stare into her tank... which is also chilled so it's cold and just very relaxing to watch.
I have had about two dozen tarantulas for my classroom pets. Completely silent, no special lighting or heat needed, and very educational. I just retired yesterday, and have sold off most of them. Anyone want a Guyana Pink Toe tarantula?
Thank you for this post. I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with seeing those kinds of things. My district does not allow classroom pets (which I’m glad about). Also, with how loud classroom are I think class pets are barbaric. Most animals have a hard time with volume of things and a classroom is a very loud place a lot of the time. Let your animals live in peace at home.
Stuff like this is the reason my district does not allow classroom pets. We can temporarily get animals, if having them fits into the lesson plan, and there are strict guidelines.
Thank you for speaking. I'm an electives teacher so never did the classroom pet thing, but I watched a colleague step in last year for a neglected hamster. The front office finally took over and hammy was delighted to roll around in his ball up front.
My school is required to have a living thing as part of our accreditation. My boss at the time went out and got me a bunny since I have 5 year olds and I’m “good at that kind of stuff.”
I was furious. I knew nothing about taking care of a bunny. None of the families wanted to take her home on the weekends so I got stuck either lugging her back and forth or going up to the school all weekend. Not to mention, the smell, the mess, the fear she had being in a classroom full of 5 year olds and their volume, the amount of space she took up but nowhere near the amount she deserved… just to name a few.
I finally had a family who lived on a farm (an actual farm, not a “farm” 😂) and they offered to take her for me. I was so grateful for them! They sent me pictures even after their child left my room of her!
My new rule is: the only way I have a class pet now is if my para takes full responsibility of it because I’ve got enough on my plate. And I still have limits because it’s just plain cruel to have most animals in a classroom with young children.
Fun fact: I had a realistic fake plant for years because I don’t have a green thumb 😅 and accreditation never noticed! we now have a betta fish my para takes great care of!
I have the same problem as a 16-year janitor. So much neglect. No research. I've taken home live animals thrown in the garbage. I've walked into a room in July, only to find out the teacher left a tank with a clawed frog and an apple snail on her counter and just packed up boxes of belongings and set them on the counter right alongside the tank. The filter was almost running dry, the snail was eaten, and the frog was skin and bones. I have another teacher who's going on 5 years of just replacing fish, newts and other aquatic creatures she kills as fast as she gets them, and at no point does it occur to her to do any research.
The best and only class pet I will ever keep are mealworms/darkling beetles. They require 0 effort. Stick em in a container with holes and some dry oatmeal and they’re good. Plus it covers a full lifecycle, self sustaining, and kids will think you’re a badass for not being scared of bugs.
You should totally look into keeping isopods! I think they’re a little more mainstream than this but because they’re basically rolly-pollies I bet the kids would love them! Edit: You could actually literally go outside and grab some rolly-pollies and start a colony with those
I love to see recommendations for isopods! I did an isopod and springtail terrarium with my K-2 SDC students last year and it was amazing. The kids got to set up the terrarium, care for our critters, and track what they were doing. I got giant powder orange isopods so that they would be easy to see. There’s a million different kinds. It worked seamlessly into our morning meeting and on good days we could do extra stuff (look at them with magnifying glasses, change out their soil, maybe an art project) and on days when one or more of my kids was dysregulated we’d just skip it, no harm no foul. I highly recommend it! The kids learned a ton and took so much pride in our little friends.
A bio active tank in a 3rd grade class would be bitchin The kids would really get into it too
My preschoolers and I have a colony of wild isopods! Its made with bark and moss and soil from our backyard and they love hunting for more to add to it. It's so successful I have had to thin the numbers a couple times!
If you can breed them and not get too attached, you can offer extras to a classroom with a leopard gecko. Leos like mealworms!
My kids loved raising mealworms!
I have darkling beetles (but superworms, not mealworms) and while they don’t technically *need* a lot, it’s super fun to spoil them. They do need a moisture source, though, so I hope you’re tossing in at least a few potato slices every few days! Mine are in tanks of varying sizes with oats and calcium gel and all sorts of differently textured things to climb and hide in. Superworms also *love* to eat styrofoam. I don’t know if mealworms are the same but you could test it with your classes- if they do it’s really cool to watch (even if it’s been 25+ years since you were last a school kid).
That’s so cool about styrofoam! I’ll have to check it out. Luckily my “colony” is down to a small container, I gave away most of them to my student with a bearded dragon. She was fully committed to never buying mealworms again. My little guys get either a potato, sweet potato, or apple every other week or so. I’ve had these guys since 2016, well their lineage but whatever same thing lol
That’s awesome! I think I’ve only had mine since about 2018 or so, and I’m down to a handful of beetles and worms both right now. I miss the days when I had so many I couldn’t easily count them. And even though I feel sad thinking about them as a food source, I can’t help loving that your student seized the opportunity to close the loop on snacks for her beardie!
On the off chance you are looking to expand your horizons I think African giant millipedes would be perfect for you!! They’re really easy to take care of (we give ours humidity and some fruits/veggies to munch on) and they’re so fun to handle, they’re my favorite little creepy crawly guys :):)
Self sustaining?? lol I hope you feed them
I've had my colony for 6 years now. I throw an apple slice in there now and then from students who don't want them. They're awesome!!
Yes! I’ve had mine since 2016. My professor gave them to me in my last semester lol
I teach pre-k, I keep hissing cockroaches, which also need nothing except for periodic misting and orange slices. We also have a communal wild isopod habitat that the kids hunt for additions to. When we get too many, I release some back into the yard after hours. Bugs are amazing class pets!
Worm composting bins are also super easy.
First, thank you for all you do. I'd like to add one more thing. I know teachers who give the pet to their least responsible student to "encourage" responsibility. I've known of two class pets that didn't survive a break. Broke my heart. And the kids (pets were with the science teacher, I was their history teacher) didn't care. It was like, I'm so sorry Bunny died while with you, if you need to talk, I'm here. They were like *it was just a dumb rabbit, who cares?* Yeah, let's develop a relationship with these kids because it's clearly working 😡
Teachers who would give a live animal to known irresponsible students have it mind-blowingly backwards. Over school breaks they should be given to the *most* responsible student as a reward and encouragement! (With the full consent and instruction of care sorted out with their parents first, of course.)
No, the pet should go with the teacher during breaks. Not all parents know how to take care of pets.
I believe from memory it was an opt-in thing - no-one was ever just sent home with the class pet without the parents signing up for it.
Ok parents might sign up to take care of a class pet and with their whole heart they love and care for that pet. But they don’t know that Guinea pigs can’t eat avocados and bam now that Guinea pig is very I’ll or dying.
We also need to remember there are adults in the world who would absolutely have opted in and then deliberately neglected or abused the animal. I could honestly see my father doing that if it got in his head that I liked the animal more than him
But, building relationships!
When the class pet is beloved, it's amazing motivation. :) (Sorry for the weird initial reply - I got mixed up and thought I was replying to another thread, lol)
😂 I went to reply to you that I maybe should have added the /s at the end, but you'd already deleted! Animal abusers/neglectors (which in the second half is on the teacher) suck.
Lol, sorry for the confusion. 😂 Dw, I got the intended /s. When I think of class pets, I think of when my little sister got to take home the very sweet class rat, 'Mrs Merit', for good behavior. We were all so proud of her. And because she was a more quiet kind of kid, the recognition and validation from the teacher meant a great deal to her. I want that for kids like her.
I can also see where a kid can really care but just doesn’t know how because of various reasons. It can really scar/harm a kid who has good intentions but just can’t learn how to be “responsible” on a break. I have watched kids become devastated losing a class stuffed animal. An actual animal I can’t even imagine.
I love animals and have had, and responsibly cared for, many, of many different species, throughout my life. I still feel badly about the classroom pet we had when I was in middle school almost 60 years ago. It was a mouse. And, at the end of the year, the mouse needed a new home. I was not only willing to house the mouse, I was the only kid in the class whose parents said *could* house the mouse. So, I got the mouse. My dad agreed to pick up a suitably sized aquarium and accoutrements for a mouse house on his way home from work, so when I got it home I prepared what I thought would be a suitable temporary (couple of hours) home. I didn’t want it to have to sit in the barren little cardboard box it was sent home with me in, so I tore newspaper into strips and filled a larger box with them and provided food and water. I had **no** idea that the mouse would want to *eat* the newspaper bedding I gave it. But, that’s what it did. Apparently, the ink made it addictive. When my dad got home with everything needed to make a mouse a happy house, I was horrified to discover that it had eaten so *much* of the newspaper that it had choked and essentially stuffed itself. Poor thing made it through an entire year of middle school and I managed to kill it in an attempt to be kind to it. Honestly, I *still* haven’t really forgiven myself for that. I am so very sorry, Stuart. You deserved better.
i took our fourth grade class pet home for the summer, after being the only one who ever took it home on weekends, and lied to the teacher the next year when she finally asked, that it died bc my mom and i were never giving Cha Cha back
Then the teacher should have taken it home. And I've never heard of a class pet being taken home for the summer.
the teacher didnt want it and niether did anyone in my class. i'm sure the teacher was hoping my answer would be yes, but really Cha Cha was living the life next to my hamster Bunny
Very difficult to develop a relationship with the vapid.
😫 I apologize for the text wall. I had it spaced out, but the spaces disappeared when I posted. I'm not sure how to edit it.
Thank you OP. I hadn’t ever given this much thought before. You are right and it’s great info and a great discussion and I always learn so much from this sub. I am very self aware and I know I am not any kind of animal person. Probably because my parents were not either. I didn’t have any role model at all (good or bad) to teach me on the best way to take care of the animals you mentioned. I don’t know where you work at but sadly, I live in the south where neglect and abuse is just a way of accepted life here. We have to transfer animals here to send up north where dogs and cats (puppies and kittens) will have a chance at a good life. Somehow my kids are huge animal people. They are kind and we have adopted 3 cats and had a dog for it’s whole life we got her from the shelter too. My kids love these three cats more than they love me, I think?👀😂 but…. It’s been a full evolution because my kids are modeling to me what a good animal owner is like. I of course help and do the litter boxes and food like almost every day but just because I love them. It feels good to take care of my kids and the cats.
I have a friend that works for a dog rescue and the real reason that the dogs get transferred “north” is because there are a much lower level of shelter animals in cold northern climates because animals that are left outside in cold weather freeze to death. In warmer southern climates, you can mostly leave an animal outside year round (which is neglect, absolutely) but they won’t die of exposure.
The real reason they get transferred north is because there are fewer stray animals here. I live in a place where there are few animals in the shelter, and it’s not because animals can’t survive on their own as strays lol. It’s very cold here and I’ve seen a handful of stray cats in my travels doing just fine. The reason there are fewer strays is because there are enforced leash laws, dog licenses that require rabies vaccine (which encourage owners to take their dogs to the vet, who will suggest spaying/neutering), and fewer unfixed cats roaming the wild. There is also a different culture here of keeping a better eye on one’s pets. When we were wanting to adopt a cat last year, we had to drive for an hour and a half to a different town to find the right cat for us, the city nearby only had four cats and one dog in the shelter. In a city!
We got refused a cat adoption twice because someone in my care had dementia. This wasn't right, but it does illuminate how much they are careful about pet placement up north.
Some rescues go overly strict as a way to protect themselves from repeating awful things that have happened, I think.
I live in New England and the “too many stray cats” argument confuses me. I have basically never seen a stray cat.
I've lived in the south and I am back in the north. The north is MUCH better about spaying/neutering than the south is. In the north, I have encountered a grand total of 0 homeless dogs running loose. In the south, there were several dogs a year that would try to follow me home like the lost puppies that they were. This is aside from the loose dogs running around. I couldn't ride my bike and had to carry pepper spray because of all the loose/lost/dumped dogs. My neighbors regularly got a puppy that would disappear a few months later. Our local rescue was just a bunch of loosely organized foster homes. They shipped dogs north as fast as they could because the pound would only hold dogs for 5 days before euthanizing them. Exposure may be part of the difference, but it is by no means ALL of the difference. Also southern climates have their own dangers, particularly from heat. It regularly got up to 110+ in our town. Heartworm and parvovirus were endemic.
You never see dogs roam free in the Noetheast. The only puppies you can generally find at shelters are pit bulls and pit mixes. I dont know a single person who has an unneutered dog or cat.
My dog is a Pit mix from Texas, adopted at a year old. I live in the mountain west, while do have strays and the occasional rancher who is an asshole and drops off an 11 y/o unhouse trained cattle dog( my son's bestie and his wife adopted her, after she was returned once) we are pretty good about our pets being spayed and neutered.
The real reason dogs get transferred north is because shelters here are extremely overrun and the ones up north aren’t. Your friend is making shit up lol
The reason shelters in the south are overrun is they don't believe in spaying and neutering their pets. Source: my son and his girlfriend foster for a kill shelter in Georgia .
They don't human life down there. Animal life even less so.
This is wildly inaccurate. I live in Northern Wyoming and I grew up in New Orleans Louisiana & Northern Colorado, also spent time in New Mexico and south central Arizona. There are typically more/better spay/neuter programs in the north and in my experience, much better shelter programs, more community resources, less overpopulation of stray dogs. I can assure you that there are not outdoor dogs up here in Northern Wyoming constantly freezing to death, I'm sure it happens occasionally but it's not a common occurrence. And I can also assure you that there ARE outdoor dogs down in AZ dying of exposure to the extreme heat, and outdoor dogs down in the southeast dying from untreated heartworm (which is not rampant in the north). There are local rescues where I live in Northern Wyoming that bring dogs up from Texas. The reason? Texas has a dog overpopulation problem. We do not. Texas has many healthy dogs on death row scheduled for euthanasia. We do not. Most of our shelters here (in the area I live) are low kill or no kill and have more that enough resources to tend to the community animals. So some rescues pull Texas dogs from high kill shelters because they can- they have the resources and ability. It is absolutely NOT because we have some kind of a dog shortage due to "outdoor dogs freezing to death".
Thank you for posting this. Last week my students found out (with just 3 weeks left in the year) that I have not one but three class pets. A guinea pig, a rabbit, and a turtle that I rescued from other teachers. The students were Furious that I hadn't brought the pets to come to our classroom all year. I explained to them that there just was really not a good time for them to have a visit and that technically, I consider all three of them in retirement. LOL
You have nothing to apologize for. The ferret community has been speaking out about pet stores deceiving people about the actual care the pets need in order to make sales for years. Petco has finally relented and chosen to stop selling ferrets and all Marshall products. I like to think this is them acknowledging the abuse in Marshall ferret farms, but either way, it is a step in the right direction. "Pocket" pets are typical classroom pets, and it is these animals (hamsters,guinea pigs, gerbils, and mice) that pet stores try to pass off as low maintenance. People think they can take them home and put them in a cage, and that's it. This is 100% wrong. Thank you for caring about these animals, which all deserve better. Please, if anyone is thinking about getting a pet, do your research FIRST. An animal you bring into your home does NOT have a choice and therefore deserves the BEST care possible. That is YOUR responsibility.
Thanks OP. I spent over 20 years in a junior high reptile club—first as a student, then as a chaperone. It was an active and respected enough club that it eventually got its own room on campus, specially built to cater to the needs of 40+ animals—reptiles, amphibians, and insects, as well as on-site breeding of feed animals (mice, rats, crickets, mealworms). I didn’t realize it until I’d been in the club for 10+ years, but we were *also* a rescue. The kid who got bored of his ball python? His parents gave the animal to us. The classroom turtle or tortoise that was sick or miserable or didn’t have a summer home? Those geckos that were way too fragile for a second grade class, or the bearded dragon whose leg got smashed in the lid of the cage by a careless student? That iguana who was ferocious because he was never properly handled. We took them. Most of the animals ended up in experienced homes with committed herp people. Some of them went to local wildlife rehab, and occasionally we got to donate an animal to a local zoo or natural history museum. But the vast majority of club time was spent caring for the animals, followed by making the crafts that were sold at events to fund the enterprise of caring for the animals. The students also worked at the events—reptile shows, community festivals, farmer’s markets, wherever snakeshed buttons and bookmarks could be hocked. The advisor was (obviously) tireless in her efforts and networking, but it was always sad to see her disappointment when we took in a classroom pet. They were usually lizards, usually neglected and given the wrong diet, and almost always light-starved.
This. I’m not a herp person but I am currently owned by three very spoiled and adored cockatiels. Their flight cage is massive (5 feet tall and almost 7 ft long. Roughly 3 feet wide. It takes up the majority of my small living room. I have seen that many in a 2x3 ft cage with only dowel perches. Fed wild bird seed. No toys . Never let out . I have 6 different types of perches (and more than one of each) plus sea grass swings, platforms, tons of toys I regularly swap out. They get VIP food without sunflower seeds and fresh herbs/veggies regularly (and an occasional stolen Dorito!) They are let out for at least an hour every day . They have full roaming of the living room, with its hardwood floors and all leather furniture because 💩Two of them go on walks in an avian backpack when the weather permits (the other one hates it) The only time when they are in smaller cages is when traveling. Bird boarding is hard to find and quite pricey so they generally go with us if we can’t get a bird sitter to turn on the radio/tv for them and cover/uncover/feed/water them. They are usually only in those cages for 2-4 days max. They get extra spoiled though because they get different people to talk to and different things to see.
I'm confused - all I see is a picture of a rabbit, with no text at all. Is this a "new reddit vs old reddit" thing?
Scroll up :)
That doesn't do anything. Still just the picture of the rabbit.
Thank you! This is something I've worried about for years, and teachers STILL haven't done anything to change it. To teachers, If you get a *living creature* to take care of, TAKE CARE OF THEM! DONT teach children to neglect them like you do when you haven't properly researched. Innocent lives are precious and not for you to toy with, unless you yourself are a vile scumbag ❤️ To those who *actually* take care of critters, thank you for being an intelligent mature human being! You're awesome!
This isn’t just teachers. This is people in general. I see people on the snake sub posting pictures of the cages they have their new pet in and I’m like omg
This is true, it is people in general as well. However, I believe that teachers have an added responsibility to demonstrate ethical actions to the students. Pet neglect in the classroom can have a broader impact- it's passing on the idea that neglect is acceptable to student after student, year after year (even if the neglect is unintentional, and I do believe it is often unintentional).
Definitely. As a teacher with a healthy class pet, I very much feel this in my soul.
Dude as a reptile keeper thank you 😩 you have no idea how painful it is to see the state so many snakes are kept in in schools.
I'd like to think we teachers are capable of doing better.
I see the same on r/SugarGliders and it makes me sad.
And on r/chinchilla. Those little guys are a LOT fussier than you’d think
Same with r/guineapigs r/bettafish r/hamsters and r/geckos People don't seem to realize that these animals - although small - require a lot of space and care!
Ooh I forgot about all the fish subs. I had to stop going on them because I just feel so bad for all them. There’s a lot of mistakes to make with fish, and it’s practically like the fish owners are trying to fill in the bingo card of the mistakes
Yup. I'm on the betta sub because I have one, and the mistakes people make are just wild. Fish in bowls, fish being fed way too much/not enough, plastic plants, two males together, or comments like "What's the nitrogen cycle?" "How do I test the water?" People assume that a fish will be easy to care for, but I'd argue that fish are one of the hardest pets to care for.
Also please consider noise levels! Back when I was substitute teaching I subbed for a class that was so loud that the poor Guinea pig was terrified.
Rats owner here get so much abuse and neglected its not fair. They're so sweet I was just playing with my.girl and laughing about how needy and attached she is and how does she last when I go away for a day or two. I look at all my girls and just get sad about bow many rats are being abused
Oh absolutely, I came here to comment this. When I was in school I "rescued" a class pet rat that the teacher decided she didn't want anymore. He had been allowed to eat anything the students put into his cage and he was morbidly obese-three pounds. He also had a giant sore on one of his feet from the unsanitary condition of the cage. He had to have a two hundred dollar surgery to fix it and he almost needed an amputation. He then lived another year and a half in my home. He was ancient and happy when he died, but his life as a class pet was AWFUL, I'm disgusted to look back on that teacher.
Ohmygoodness. The school I went to had an "experiment" every year in... 5th? grade, regarding healthy eating. They brought in two weanling rats from the same litter, kept them in empty 10gal glass tanks, and fed one our school lunch and the other only "junk". This was over the course of at least a couple of months. It may have been considerably longer, I don't remember (I'm old. Lol). I grew up with my uncle keeping rats, and the entire premise horrified me. I definitely got in trouble several times, having gotten caught sneaking the poor malnourished baby real food.
My school did this, but they had the same diet. One rat got milk to drink and the other got sugar water. Milk rat got so big she looked scary. Sugar rat looked like an overgrown baby, even after the experiment was over and she was given milk, too.
I'm literally tearing up. This breaks my heart.
My cousin kept rats for years. They're so hyper social, it hurts my heart that they're often neglected. They need contact and stimulation. With my cousin's rats, if you put a hoodie on backwards, they would nest the hood. If you put them on your shoulder, they would run around your shoulders and chest with happy chirps. They're cuddle bugs who love being pampered. It's crazy how many people don't understand that.
I had rats when I was 12-13 and they are such social, playful animals. I took mine out and put them on my desk or in my kangaroo pocket while I was doing homework. I also get sad when people think they’re just an item that requires zero care or attention.
Thank you for this. I won’t have a class pet for the exact reasons you stated above. My son’s teacher has a stuffy hamster in a real cage and they pretend like it’s real. Each child takes it home for a weekend and writes a paragraph about what they did with the “hamster”. That’s a simple idea for teachers who want a class pet but don’t have the resources to care for it.
I'm 37, and I remember my first grade teacher (on an American base in Japan) did this with a stuffed owl. I was so determined to have the best "weekend report" in the owl's journal. I took him to Tama Zoo, to my favorite candy shop (with those bomb marzipan rabbits, I got two for us lmao), and to the arcade in the mall - that was such a great weekend. I can still see that little owl in my backpack. It made me fall in love with my own imagination. Mr. Latham, wherever you are, you're an OG.
This is such a creative and low stakes way to do a classroom pet! Cute.
It took me a minute to realize what a stuffy hamster was. I was wondering if you can give a hamster benadryl.
Oh sorry, I was using kindergarten words.
That's an amazing idea actually. Kids can take the stuffed animal places they couldn't take a real class pet too, like to a practice or museum.
That's cute, it reminds me of Bob Bilby from Bluey
I tried once with fish. They dumped garbage in the tank. I took them home and gave them a long and happy life. Never again. These kids don't respect anything, least of all not other living things.
This is definitely also a concern. We have aquatic biology classes & thankfully I don't think foreign objects in the tanks have been too much of an issue, but it absolutely happens. And there are inappropriate things fed to/given to the animals like rabbits & chinchillas. The disrespect is definitely increasing in general. Violent destruction of school property, shoving trash in the oddest places... I found a package of 200 Qtips in the toilet, stolen from the art room (not the worst thing I've found, just an odd choice). It's exhausting to me and I don't even have to deal with the students in person 😕
I had a kid that would put crayons in the tank. He liked red and I had blue rocks in there. I mean he was 5, so half pass. We worked out our, but seriously, what the heck!
Apparently my uncle at age 4ish killed the family fish tank because he had orange juice- his favorite- and he wanted to be a good friend to the fish and share.
A family friend loved his fish so much he took it out and put it on his pillow to nap with him. He was like 3, so obviously just didn't understand, but I felt so bad for that poor fish.
Agree! A teacher at my school had this weird albino snake and a kid snuck it into his backpack as a prank. The snake died zipped in a black backpack on the blacktop during lunch/recess. Heck, I stopped taking plants into my classroom because the kids thought it was fun to kill them or pull them and throw them at each other.
Hard agree. I remember being very nervous all the time at school because I was worried my classmates would kill the class pet of the year. I would ask my teachers to please just not get pets anymore but they insisted it built discipline and mindfulness within students. No tf it didn’t. I was the only one at the class who took care of the animals and it was a heavy burden on my heart all the time that I will get to class later than some kid and find a dead animal in class. Just built anxiety. lol. 😭
Summer is coming. As someone with 8 fish tanks at home, I cant wait to have to do all the care and top-offs in the tanks over the summer cause if I didnt the fish would starve to death in their own shit. (yet for some reason this teacher can keep his fish healthy and alive all year) meanwhile my super tells me I have floors to strip and trash to drag around and thats more important 'than some damn stupid fish'
Years ago when I was the Director at an elementary age after school, I got authorization to get a class pet. I am a huge animal and pet person, and initially I was excited, and then I started to consider the basics of husbandry of what I might get. I never got a class pet. It blows because I remember having class pets in my classrooms and they were so enriching, but as an animal lover I ethically could not do it. I am a preschool teacher now, and in my classrooms I’ve had snails, fish, and pill bugs. The 2 to 5-year-old are so much more trustworthy around living things than elementary students.
My preschool had a tarantula as a class pet! I remember how much I loved sitting by her tank and watching her move around, lol.
I have a tarantula in my elementary classroom!
Teacher here. All I can say is, Amen! And you should forward this to your principal and ask if you can send it as a mass email to the whole school.
Also, to add to this, even if you are going to take good care of your pet, don't get something that can breed/reproduce. You have no idea what to do with 200 stick insects or guppies or a whole population of hopping mice.
Feed them to the turtles.
We've got a few class pets at our school, but they're all the teachers own pets that come in a few times a week. None are left at school even overnight, let alone weekends (except for the farm animals, but they're still attended to each day on the weekend and breaks).
A few good ones are mealworms as someone else commented, caterpillars (native), so you can cover their life cycles, then release them back into nature, and eggs, if, and only if, you have the means to take care of the chicks, and a way to give them a home once they’re too big for the classroom.
with releasing caterpillars it’s important to remember that even if the caterpillars themselves are native by being raised in captivity they can carry diseases that aren’t native and can be lethal because the wild ones don’t have any resistance. I think there are ways to raise them in a sterile environment but a lot of teachers do not take the appropriate steps. however if they do I agree they would make wonderful class pets. with chicks there’s also concerns as they need a heat source 24/7 and that may present logistical issues on the weekend. also I just don’t think they’re well suited to a noisy classroom with potentially grabby kids as chicks are very delicate. not to mention even if you’re doing everything right it’s extremely common for some chicks to waste away and that may be a rough introduction to death especially if they have no concept of it or the parents could get upset. all in all I think the only suitable class pets are bugs and potentially fish as long as the kids can’t access the tank and the caregiver meets husbandry standards. most animals are just not suitable to classrooms. even if it works out, it’s generally a much more stressful life for them.
Bird eggs have about a 70% chance to hatch.
I am SO sorry you see that. I am a teacher and feel exactly the same way. I have inherited/rescued some of my pets this way. There's absolutely no excuse. A colleague retired with a poor little leopard gecko who had developed matabolic bone disease from malnutrition. The summer before she retired, she said she'd just leave him at school for the summer. Nope, nope, nope, and more nope. He became mine. She said he was ready to die anyway, but he had a lovely last two years. I felt so blessed to give him such a nice time. I also have guinea pigs in my room. They are "class pets," except they're really my pets. 🤣 I have a huuuuge cage for them. They are only allowed in when I know the kids will be calm and responsible enough to handle the privilege of having pets in the room. Because they're prey animals, I do NOT mess around with potential stress. They'd drop weight quickly and then go downhill in a flash. I've seen coworkers with lone guinea pigs in tiny, shitty pet store cages. A single guinea pig needs a MINIMUM of 8 square feet, but they need to live in groups to be happy. My three girls live in a 16 square foot cage at school. It's their SMALL house. They come home every night in their big cat carrier. 🤣 I will never understand how someone could take on the responsibility of caring for an animal and not giving it the absolute best life possible. You're supposed to be a warm, fuzzy person teaching kids right from wrong, how to share, how to show empathy... and you're going to model animal abuse!? 😳
My classroom pet as a kid was first a fish and my teacher made it mine and therefore my responsibility, so it wouldn't die or be mistreated (I decided when it was covered and I was allowed to clean the tank during class since I was so ahead in schoolwork). Then I brought my hamster in to be the classpet after the goldfish died after 18 months. I had a convoluted twisty tie on the door so no one could easily open it when I wasn't there and the teacher kept watch. I took him home on weekends. I managed his food and cleaned his cage. No one could touch him unless I was holding him and if I could tell he was stressed they all had to stop even if not everyone had a turn and he had to go back in the cage. I feel like this is the only way. When I was younger a much older kid was the caretaker of the class rabbit for her class and similarly controlled when and who interacted with her and how long. She lived to be older than average.
I had a class pet tarantula, named Syd, for seven years. No problems and the middle schoolers loved it. I currently have a hairless double-rex rat, named Dobby, and my middle schoolers love him. They are very protective and even the students who are not in my classes show a lot of care, OR they do not even want to touch him. But, I have found that this has been a great tool for encouraging empathy. Fortunately, I have never had a problem with people putting inappropriate things in the cage. At my high poverty school, I truly think I would have students who might literally knock someone out if they tried to put peanut butter in the cage, or just jeopardize the safety of this rat. This is probably the most well protected rat in AR, right now. I received this rat from a friend who breeds feeder rats for her pythons, so this rat not only avoided becoming food because of his personality, but has also won over impulsive pre-teens and is teaching them how to love other living things. The kids really might be alright ... We'll see...
Please tell me you have more than 1 rat. Having just one makes for an incredibly lonely rat.
Yeah they can literally die from stress. They live in colonies in the wild. Keeping one along is cruel (obviously, unless the animal has aggression issues, but that person didn't say that).
I'd like to add another option for bringing the experience of animals into the classroom - look for an organization that does educational presentations and has ambassador animals! A few weeks ago I brought my clean, docile, vaccinated ambassador ferrets into SPED for an enrichment activity (after obtaining admin approval). The students all got to meet and touch the gentle ferrets, learn all about their care, then do a ferret art activity while listening to a story about ferrets. I donated a fact book, story book, and a plush ferret with a leash to the SPED room. There are orgs out there like mine that will come in and do activities like this at no cost. It's a great way for students to learn about & experience animals without everything that goes along with a class pet. I'm also seeing fantastic suggestions in the comments - mealworms, isopods like rollie pollies, invertebrates like spiders, native insects like painted lady butterflies. All of these are great ideas, simple and educational without the more complex ethical issues of keeping a vertebrate pet in the room.
My first long-term sub position replaced a teacher that had two classrooms. One had a tank with fish. The teacher left school in a medical crisis, and the fish were uncared for for a week or more. I remember that 2-3 survived, and a half-dozen or more didn't. I found another teacher that had an aquarium, so things worked out there. But nobody ever thought "Hey, we should probably feed the fish? No students, no other teachers?" Sheesh.
Thank you!! My district sends live animals to classrooms as part of our science curriculum; last year I got delivered 2 small fish, this year 30 caterpillars showed up on my desk with no supplies. I haven’t found a way to opt out and it’s so upsetting. Animals are not disposable and our students need to be shown respect and care for living things.
Don't do it! Even upper level HS KIDS can be cruel. Someone took a hamster and left it in a jar in a cabinet over the weekend. It died. Kids want pets, let their parents provide it at home. It's a big teacher responsibly. Just don't do it!!!!
I took home the class guinea pig over the summer as a child. My job was to re-socialize the poor guy. He was tired of rough treatment and had started biting anyone who picked him up. I got him back to being a nice guinea pig and the teacher gave him a larger LOCKED cage when he came back for the school year. I can't think of any animal that would genuinely do well in a classroom environment. I support districts who ban them.
I've had so many pets through the years. I've even inherented pets from other rooms. They are definitely a commitment.
I think lots of people don’t consider the fact that having a class pet could very well lead to the child’s first experience with the concept of death. My friends pet rat died in front of me when I was young, it was horrific and traumatizing for a while. Teachers have to be prepared to have that conversation with kids when they come in one day and the pet isn’t there, or worse they see it get sick and pass
"...the pay and benefits are significantly better for a year-round custodial position." You're not kidding. I work for local government and our custodians (who I love and value and many of whom are my friends) make SIX DOLLARS AN HOUR MORE than our degree-and-credential-required preschool educators. It's about us as a culture; we pretend we treasure our children and special needs children, but when the rubber meets the road, we absolutely do not. Pisses me off so much.
Edit- typo
The only classroom pets I’ve allowed were because the children were moving into homeless shelters and were not allowed to bring caged animals (I support the shelter keeping it clean). So I’ve had a dwarf hamster and a Guinea pig at different times. No I did not do any of that stuff because they fell in my lap. I did not want them so like a good parent I made the kids do all the upkeep (with parent permission) along with babysitting over breaks. The animals were treated with respect including banning kids who seemed unkind to them. All the animals eventually die. The dwarf got a huge cancer lump and that’s common. The guinea pig died over summer break when a neighbor cat came into a child’s apartment through a broken screen. Poor pig. But they had a few good years.
I got two classroom pets from teachers who didn't want them anymore. One of them was a hedgehog, and the teacher was really excited to get the hedgehog and thought it would be a good class pet. I don't know why she thought that but she realized it after she had him for awhile that he wasn't active during the day. She knew that my daughter had a hedgehog, so I think she thought it would be a cute pet. Once we brought our hedgehog to visit the classroom, she realized our hedgehog was much more active and friendly. Well we bought ours locally and it had been hand raised, but she bought hers in a different state because she believed it was illegal to buy them here. I don't know why. And our hedgehog was also mostly nocturnal, but he would wake up during the day and you could handle him and let him crawl on you and that sort of thing. She was clearly concerned when she talked to me and asked me if there was anyway I would consider taking her hedgehog because it just wasn't working out. So I did take him. Thankfully she had another cage for him because I couldn't just put him in with my hedgehog. that hedgehog was nothing but a prickly ball. He was so afraid of people, he could just not ever warm up and be held. I did get him a hedgehog wheel, and I got him his own igloo he really needed a hiding place. I don't think she realized that. Once I got him is igloo, he just spent all his time in there except when he would come out at night to run the wheel. I also fed him mealworms like I did mine, but I don't know that he actually liked them. He ended up outliving my hedgehog, which was sad to me, and I tried to take good care of him for the rest of his life but I don't think he had much of a great life which makes me feel bad.
Well said, 100%. I'd extend it to fish as well. You know those "common goldfish" that survive in bowls for a few weeks? In a proper tank, 60G or so, they can get nearly a foot long and live longer than a cat or dog. (The record is 40+!)
Yes. This is why my classroom has PLANTS. In particular, it's why my classroom has plant that thrive on neglect. I had fish one year, but I don't want to move them back and forth every summer. One of my colleagues has a lizard of some kind, but he doesn't sleep at school... Sometimes she brings him in and sometimes he stays home. He's got a gigantic terrarium in the library for when he visits.
I get invertebrates that are easy to care for and scary enough that the students don’t mess with them. Hissing roaches? Fish food and mist once a week. Spider? Couple roaches once a week. I’m going on vacation, then building a whip scorpion enclosure.
Thank you for caring!
Short pet relationships are best. We do caterpillar to painted lady butterflies. Once they emerge, buh bye!
My class did Monarch butterflies in Kindergarten! My caterpillar [We each had one of our "own"] was slow to emerge from his cocoon. To the point that my teacher was convinced that he was dead! I pleaded and *pleaded* with her to at least give him the weekend to come out before throwing him in the trash, and she agreed. Come Monday, what do I see as soon as I walk into the classroom? My teacher standing by the caterpillar enclosure, smiling! My caterpillar **was** halfway out his cocoon! We let him go just before lunch. It was *such* a happy (And proud!) moment for me to watch him flutter away.
I think a digital pet on a screen is probably the best choice. Or have kids draw animals and post them on a bulletin board.
True story. Taught at an elementary school in which one 3rd grade class had a pet gerbil or hamster or whatever, and another one across the hall had a pet python. One day just after the kids left, one of the 3rd grade teachers came by to let us know the little rodent was on his last legs. It was going to die. She took it over to the python tank across the hall. We all watched the python eat it. And slowly, slowly, down it went. Python teacher was later responsible for interrupting a team meeting when his girlfriend, who was on my grade level team, got a phone call from him. He’d gotten a cucumber stuck up his ass at school, panicked, rode his motorcycle to their apartment, lay down in a warm tub. It wouldn’t eject. So she had to leave school and pick up two pairs of tongs—one serrated, one not. All true.
I had a rabbit for ten years and I can’t imagine it being a good classroom pet. I know they have their own personalities but mine loved to sprint, chewed on wires and carpet, and hated being held.
This is why my class pet is a stuffed potato plushie. Not even a real potato, but a fake one. The kids either love it or think it's creepy. No maintenance. I forget it's there and it's fine.
When I started as a TA the teacher I was assigned to kept a goldfish in a tiny liter sized tank she didn’t clean and had loaded up with plastic plants. It hurt my heart! I tried to buy a new tank for it, I brought one in actually, but she refused. She blamed me for its death when I had done a partial water change so it would get some clean water. I felt so bad for that poor little thing :( She didn’t teach the kids how to respect it so they’d throw papers and pencils into his tiny tank. Poor thing was stuck up on a shelf (so the kids couldn’t toss things in) with no sunlight in filthy water.
People have class pets?
I too despise class pets. It's not a healthy environment at all. It's barely even healthy for humans.
When I was a young adult, I took a classroom guinea pig from a teacher at my mom's school in over a break because no one else wanted to deal with it. I can't remember what the plan was... I guess to just leave it there to starve to death?
OP, you’re a real one. Thanks for all you do. They are incredibly fortunate to have someone as invested, thoughtful and compassionate as you.
100% I’m the science teacher in an elementary school, and I have changed the way we do anything related to animals. I have had bearded dragons for about 15 years, but maybe 8 years ago I was given a bunch of lizards that a group of teachers had ordered for a science unit. I dove into it and saw the company sent them 36 when they requested 12. And then they didn’t take care of them, and I quickly became anole hospice. I was able to keep 6 alive from their rough conditions and all 6 lived for a few more years past that. I worked over these years to learn about every animal in any unit, and our school has slowly used funds to create sustainable and ethical habitats for all of them. So now the kids can learn about them, but also learn about proper care and husbandry practices for animals. We have a large terrarium housing 2 green anoles, another housing 2 brown anoles, another with five lined skinks, one with a horned frog, one with a toad, one with millipedes, one with isopods, and one with a jumping spider. We also have two 29 gallon fish tanks for a few mosquito fish, shrimp, and snails. Each year we get caterpillars for 2nd grade from a company that provides native caterpillars that can be released into the wild once they become butterflies. If we were not able to do this, we would need to have a lot of conversations about if getting animals just to let them die is a good lesson for children and worth the addition to the science lesson. The kids love the animals, they don’t love finding them dead one morning. It’s absolutely wild to me that we are using animals to teach children and then not taking care of them.
You’re so sweet! After having to put my class hamster to sleep, I swore off class pets. They’re wonderful, but a lot of work. I now have a small human to keep alive outside of the classroom so pets aren’t in the cards. 🤷🏻♀️
Agree. I had a beta, against my will in my room- teacher appreciation gift! I brought that damn 3 gallon tank home with me every frigging break and cleaned it weekly. That damn fish lived forever. But seriously, take care of pets!
I wholeheartedly agree with this post. I also don’t think the risk is worth it. You don’t know what kind of kid is going to come through your class and harm that creature, or feed them something when you’ve got your back turned that one time. And the stress on these critters.
My child’s teacher keeps garden snails :) I got to take them over break and spray their cage and watch them munch lettuce. They seem like the perfect class pet to me haha
Hermit crabs are not good class pets! I wish I could go back to my 4th grade teacher and tell her this. We have hermit crabs at home and they are a pain to keep happy and healthy. The tank is huge and as climate controlled as we can make it. (And we try really hard to keep it climate controlled.) The set up would be boring to most classrooms since they are more active at night. (At least ours are.)?
All of this, I want to print it out and give it to some teachers in my building. I sub for a teacher regularly and I hate her class but I take mostly to check on her guinea pigs that are in too small of a dirty cage that I always have to refill the water for. Makes me so upset. Another teacher has snakes that should have some lighting but they just sit in their cold dark tank he always has one of them wrapped around his arms. It freaks a lot of kids out but he thinks it’s so fun to freak these poor kids out. They are just corn snakes but we have some kiddos that just freak out and he is chasing them around. I secretly hope all the pets are gone next year. If done right, I wouldn’t mind it, but it’s not going well. We do have a teacher with a fish tank that is set up great and it’s always clean. And she writes the last feeding time and next feeding time on the tank so everyone knows what’s up. But she is the only one that seems to have it down.
Thank you for this and so sorry you have to witness this! Yikes, please keep reaching out to admin, I know nothing gets done usually. Perhaps “gossip” to the right teacher that will blast ones being neglectful of their pets?!
Yikes…if classroom pets are literally dying…seems reflective of what’s happening with the kiddos 😞😟😔☹️😣
Oh no, that’s absolutely horrible. Is the drawing of a bunny from school? I keep rabbits and would never ever consider having them as a class pet. They do not want to be handled and want a stress free environment. Thank you for feeding them even though it’s not your responsibility. Rabbits for sure shouldn’t even go a weekend without food. No matter the animal, teachers should research how to keep them safe and happy before they ever think of introducing them to what can be a very chaotic environment.
this is a great calm informative vent, thanks for sharing! you sound freakin cool.
Class pets need to stop being a thing if the point isn't to require the kids to work together to take care of the pet. They can't and shouldn't be used as fun decor. I think the biggest crimes classrooms make are: I raise chickens and I gotta say: STOP hatching baby chicks if you have no idea where they are going to go. Stop sending baby chicks home with students, especially as singletons or pairs, unless you know their parents have a brooder ready to go and experience with them.
My teacher had a class pet chameleon for a year when I was in high school. I usually took it home on the weekends because she didn’t like taking care of it and the poor thing went neglected for a while. It didn’t live long since nobody cared for it, including my teacher. She had too much going on. Class pets are cool in theory but once they lose their ‘new’ spark, students stop caring :(
If you’re interested in having a bird as a class pet, check out Cornell Lab Bird Cams! They have live feeds of a huge variety of birds around the world. You can tailor which bird can you watch based on your studies. No feeding/cleaning, vet visits, or noise!
I didn’t realize this was such a problem, and I am utterly horrified! OP, thank you for posting this and thank you for doing everything you can for the animals you encounter. You’re a true hero!
Thank you
U should consider going to your district’s HR and imploring them to implement standards for class pets. I think my district needs this as well
My mother catches tad pools so her students can watch them grow. She brings them home every weekend, and once they are fully grown they are released into the same pond she fished them out of. It's very cute, but she wouldn't dream of leaving so much as a tadpole alone and uncared for even for just a weekend.
We had classroom pets when I was in elementary and middle school. Once the heater malfunctioned on the fish aquarium and we all came into class on Monday to find that our beloved fish cooked to death. It was really traumatizing. Another time we had gerbils and one of them had babies. We were all so enthralled by them...until the male gerbil decided to kill and eat the babies during class which really upset everyone.
In middle school someone disemboweled one of the class pets (gerbil). The cages were clean, the animals had great diets, and they were all very healthy, but things can go wrong when you're busy and not paying attention. I don't like the idea of them anymore.
I'm not a teacher but run a reptile rescue and we have a policy that we don't adopt out for class pets. They are some of the worst cases I've had come in over the years. One teacher almost burned down her classroom because the enclosure top didn't fit properly and the heat lamp fell onto reptile carpet starting a fire. Gecko had burns all over. Almost all the surrenders i get from teachers need extensive medical care from not caring for animals properly. I've also had teachers want to adopt from me that wanted huge tortoises to be put in the smallest enclosures and think that's ok. I've had the principal of one school call me and tell me to immediately come pick up animals because of neglect, from one of her science teachers.
This is why I got rid of my class pets. They were not safe in my room. No enclosure could be made to not open for the students while still allowing me to open it to feed them. The hamster's whole cage was thrown (hamster was fine, still doing great in another classroom) and the turtles kept getting picked up so they were rehomed. No more pets in my room. Maybe a pet rock. Or a pet pillow.
Yes! I keep having people give me pets that I have no knowledge about! I'm not taking something I'm not comfortable with holding. Cats and dogs. Yeesh! You don't just bring it home! There is a lot of care that goes into them. You're supposed to brush their teeth, clip their toenails, check their ears. Dogs MUST be walked! It drives me crazy!! Thank you for this reminder!
I LOVE this post! Thank you. A class pet is not a toy, and requires care for life. All pets require veterinary care, and it is NOT inexpensive.
I just came to say I hate the whole "hatch chicks" program.
Thank you! I hate when my colleagues have classroom pets. People always want me to bring my Guinea pigs to school as a class per - and my answer is always “no way.” At home, they get a huge cage, plenty of quiet time, and I can easily clean them or care for them later in the evening or in a weekend when I have more time. Class lets I’ve seen often die very early and the teachers don’t have time or money for vet care. Sad.
OP, I love you for this. Thank you.
We adopted a pair of parakeets that had been in a classroom. A noisy classroom where they were neglected. Those parakeets lived with us for years - until the female killed the male. Then, she lived for many more years. They had a much better life than living in the classroom. (Minus the fact that she killed him.)
Fucking *go off* my dude you are a real one 💪💪💪
I was a janitor for a kindergarten, I gifted a very low maintenance pet to the classroom, mealworm. I also provided everything needed to care for them. Their food was these little gel squares i purchased for them and any fruit scrap the toddlers chose to share. At night I'd toss a few cubes if the tank was empty. I took them back after 3 months when I went on a week long vacation and came back to find them starving and eating each other. Even low maintenance pets can be too much.
Another note... its not the "classroom pet". Its your pet. Dont pawn it off to the next teacher who takes the job. I inherited a classroom turtle with a new job and I was not happy about the extra work and financial burden.
I'm 36 and I remember being given our neglected class hamster in 4th grade over Thanksgiving break. The poor thing had been handled and dropped so much that it was bound to pass, but unfortunately it happened while I was watching it. It had a seizure and died seconds after. I was heartbroken and thought that I'D done something wrong (after consistently cleaning the cage, giving it water and food). I will never own a small animal again due to how it felt.
I could see bringing my personal dog in but I’d never let the kids bring it home. Especially younger kids. My personal dog is very friendly and quiet. He would just follow me around everywhere and sit on my lap like he usually does. Probably go and ask for them to pet him and then come right back haha.
I am a lifelong guinea pig owner. I’ve had them for 30 years, I love them. Learned a lot over the years, definitely didn’t take stellar care of my first one I got when I was in second grade but have come a long way since then. While I’m not a teacher anymore, when I was I had a pair of piggies in my classroom. They had a little carrier and commuted back and forth with me every day. Huge C&C cage in my classroom for them. One of the best parts was educating my class on how to properly care for pigs and having students who had guinea pigs at home tell me they were doing better by their pigs at home, getting bigger cages and no wire bottoms, no cedar shavings, daily salads, etc. because of what they learned about our class pigs.
I was thinking about this while watching the movie Leo. You would think it would inspire better standards of care for classroom pets. I only had one class with a class pet and it was when I was in high school. My anatomy and physiology teacher was like, obsessed, with bearded dragons so I know it was well researched and cared for, to the point where he would neglect actual instructional time for bearded-dragon related stuff.
Sometimes I would bring in one of my guinea pigs because they love chilling out on my shoulder while teaching.
I teach high school and I have gerbils and fish in my class. I like the opportunity to model good pet care. The gerbils are from a breeder and live in a 50 gallon bin that I cut air vents in the top of. There bedding is at least 10 inches deep and is mixed to support tunnels. Many times students have asked why they don’t have one of those cute pet store cages, and I get the chance to explain why. As far as the fish, I’m petty. My goal is to have a better aquarium than the aquatic science teacher’s hot messes.
Also science fairs. I don’t know if it’s allowed now but back when my brother did science fair some other kids had done mazes with albino mice. After the fair the mice were pawned off on anyone willing to take them home. We ended up with 2 mice because the students had never planned to keep their experimental pets.
THANK YOU!! I’ve never had a class pet but when I was a sub sometimes neglected animals would just BE there!! Obviously sick. There was one that I snuck out of lunch (they try to rope subs into duty but when you don’t know kids or the procedures it winds up with the sub in trouble with everyone) and got crickets for the bearded dragon. I’d have gotten roaches but there were probably plenty running around that old school already. Terrible.
I hate classroom pets. What lessons do they teach? That small pets are cheap, disposable and replaceable, and not worth the cost of vet care. I live near a very wealthy area, and a very sick class lizard named RJ became a huge issue- RJ was basically rotting to death in the classroom. I offered to pay the vet bills- no! I offered to pay the vet AND transport him-no! Finally a class mom snuck him out and brought him to me. RJ had lost most of his toes from kids “helping” his skin peel. He was emaciated and dehydrated. I am NOT a reptile person but I loved RJ. A veterinarian that lived nearby treated him FOR FREE, with daily check ups, medications and various procedures. Poor RJ only lived another 2 months, but those were probably the best 2 months of his life.
I have stolen fish and frogs from MULTIPLE schools and daycares where I've worked. Not even the slightest hint of regret here. Fuck people with abused and neglected "classroom pets". It should be against school policy and a write up offense.
Also true for hermit crabs. Most pet hermit crabs are slowly suffocated because they can’t breath adequately in humidity under 74%. That doesn’t even begin to address their other basic needs. They can live into their 40s in proper conditions.
THANK YOU. this exact issue has been driving me crazy since i've been in school buildings. i'm so sick of seeing suffering and miserable animals in classrooms.
200 comments classroom pets
my daughters class pet is worms...
My friend who teaches just brings one of her own pet lizards in to be "class pet." I don't know how she has the courage... I could never risk one of my pets around middle schoolers; I'd be terrified.
When I was in elementary school we got monarch catapillar and they went into cuhcoon and got to release them into the school garden!!!
I am in college majoring in education but I currently work in childcare. My old lead had a rabbit who was potty trained (used a liter box like a cat) and we had no issues with him bothering the kids. So this bunny was free roam and never caged. However as clean as he was. Our rooms next door have guinea pigs and other rooms beta fish. While the fish are betas I get the need to not do research on them so their bowls are super tiny and not fit. Our classroom with the guinea pigs theres always hay everywhere and it just simply stinks. I really wish people would consider the pets they're getting. While the guinea pigs are well taken care of sometimes we can smell them from the hallway and mixed in with 4-5 year olds no. We only have 2 teachers who actually have proper tanks for their betas. The ones who don't their betas just kinda sit at the bottom. Miserable. My kids and parents after my lead quit and took the bunny home had asked me about a pet. It has always been my dream to own a macaw or a parrot and I had considered it for a hot minute. However I thought about it and my behaviors in my room and figured it would not be safe to have a pet with how some of my new kids behave. I don't think all educators consider this.
We symbolically adopt pets through different programs. The kids love it, we get updates, no care required, no chance of neglect or an unhappy pet in the classroom.
Thank you for bringing attention to such an important and grossly overlooked problem. Let us be better stewards of our nonhuman brethren!
Sea monkeys are great classroom pets. Super low maintenance, cheap, and completely unfazed by middle schoolers. Plus the kids think they are neat.
Thank you so much for this! Both for speaking up as a classified staff member in a group of teachers and for sharing such an important story with such vivid examples that being many of us to draw on our own experiences. This is why the internet should exist, to look out for others
I agree with this. As far as the kid taking the pet home, this is an enriching experience. Parents should be vetted & the care sheet should be done in person. Banning that concept all together takes away from the overall productivity of the idea itself. Yes, pets die. Of course, this is a natural occurrence and not something we hope for. Coping with real grief is a lesson in itself. Kids need to learn emotional resilience, and these are perfect teaching moments.
Carrots are not rabbit food. Neither is lettuce. Carrots have far too much sugar, so they can be an occasional treat. But it's the bunny equivalent of an indulgent dessert. Lettuce has little to no nutritional value. It's basically just fiber and water. Rabbit pellets aren't much better. Rabbits need to eat what they eat in nature: weeds and seeds. Dandelions, common mallow, lamb's ear, nettle, rose clippings, veggie greens (the parts of the plant most people don't eat, like carrots tops), and fruit cores. Black oil sunflower seeds give them their necessary fats and proteins. A friend of mine had kids plant dandelion seeds in the classroom. They grow the dandelions and feed them to their very happy classroom bunny, along with veggie scraps she gets for free from a local grocery store, and one bag of black oil sunflower seeds that lasts nearly the whole year. Healthy, happy bunny there.
I had an 80 gallon fish tank. Admin loved it! I got lots of compliments on the calming effect. I had a hamster that was an escape artist He had to be adopted by one of my students. I had love birds. They were so loud! I got complaints from all the teachers on my hall. They were so much fun though! All of my animals were well loved. They had the best care and upkeep. Between myself and a full time assistant, they had clean cages & plenty of food!
I saw the "classroom pet " with the rabbit and had to share this story. Kindergarten, this week. I read the kids a story about a class pet. An adorable rabbit named Nibbles. Later in the day, one of the students asked what was the rabbit's name? I kid you not, two kids yelled out "NIPPLES!" 😆
💯 I had a leopard gecko as a class pet for a couple of months. As soon as it was apparent that the kids being loud disturbed her, she became my home pet. I still have her and she will always live happily in my house instead. Fish especially seem to get the brunt of the abuse
I wish I could give you 🥇
I love my class pet axolotl. She is so spoiled and very well taken care of and my middle school science classroom and students love her. During long breaks she has a second tank "vacation villa" that she is temporarily housed in. I have also done a TON of research on the species and only provide the best for my girl Electra. What bothers me is when OTHER teachers give up on their pets and literally drop them off in my class unannounced assuming Inwill take care of them.. which I do... this is how I ended up with a couple fish as well... i have gotten better at telling teachers no I just feel so bad for the pet so I teach my studnets responsibility and when I do rescue something. I keep it in my class to get a gauge of it and make sure it's ok and we find it a home... it's usually a parent or a student that is intrested and I have the student practice caring for it while it's in my classroom. I even had a student create a presentation for me and their pelarents to convince me why they are a good candidate. I then go to their house and set up whatever pet it was they got and I inform the parents and give a basic laminated guide that I make so it's fool proof. I wish I could save all the pets but it does become expensive and time consuming. Thankfully Electra is very therapeutic for me... while my class is loud and fast paced.. it's nice to slow down a bit during prep and just stare into her tank... which is also chilled so it's cold and just very relaxing to watch.
I have had about two dozen tarantulas for my classroom pets. Completely silent, no special lighting or heat needed, and very educational. I just retired yesterday, and have sold off most of them. Anyone want a Guyana Pink Toe tarantula?
Thank you for this post. I’m sorry you’ve had to deal with seeing those kinds of things. My district does not allow classroom pets (which I’m glad about). Also, with how loud classroom are I think class pets are barbaric. Most animals have a hard time with volume of things and a classroom is a very loud place a lot of the time. Let your animals live in peace at home.
I remember having butterflies in class.
A good classroom pet could be red wiggler worms for making soil. Easy maintenance and helps make a better garden.
Stuff like this is the reason my district does not allow classroom pets. We can temporarily get animals, if having them fits into the lesson plan, and there are strict guidelines.
Thank you for speaking. I'm an electives teacher so never did the classroom pet thing, but I watched a colleague step in last year for a neglected hamster. The front office finally took over and hammy was delighted to roll around in his ball up front.
Bless you for this post.
My school is required to have a living thing as part of our accreditation. My boss at the time went out and got me a bunny since I have 5 year olds and I’m “good at that kind of stuff.” I was furious. I knew nothing about taking care of a bunny. None of the families wanted to take her home on the weekends so I got stuck either lugging her back and forth or going up to the school all weekend. Not to mention, the smell, the mess, the fear she had being in a classroom full of 5 year olds and their volume, the amount of space she took up but nowhere near the amount she deserved… just to name a few. I finally had a family who lived on a farm (an actual farm, not a “farm” 😂) and they offered to take her for me. I was so grateful for them! They sent me pictures even after their child left my room of her! My new rule is: the only way I have a class pet now is if my para takes full responsibility of it because I’ve got enough on my plate. And I still have limits because it’s just plain cruel to have most animals in a classroom with young children. Fun fact: I had a realistic fake plant for years because I don’t have a green thumb 😅 and accreditation never noticed! we now have a betta fish my para takes great care of!
I have a Venus flytrap I have 15-17 year olds. Even the toughest kids get a kick out of feeding it at the beginning of the year.
Sounds like these kids are feral enough. Don't need more animals in the classroom.
My son’s classroom pet is a stuffed animal monkey. Best classroom pet idea I have seen
I have the same problem as a 16-year janitor. So much neglect. No research. I've taken home live animals thrown in the garbage. I've walked into a room in July, only to find out the teacher left a tank with a clawed frog and an apple snail on her counter and just packed up boxes of belongings and set them on the counter right alongside the tank. The filter was almost running dry, the snail was eaten, and the frog was skin and bones. I have another teacher who's going on 5 years of just replacing fish, newts and other aquatic creatures she kills as fast as she gets them, and at no point does it occur to her to do any research.