Why snakes?  Why Kids-N-Critters?

The start:

             I was given 2 ball pythons about 12 years ago for my classroom.  At that time I had a class that was a group of behavior challenged kids.  One of my underachievers really got interested in the snakes.  I made his interaction with the snakes contingent on his quality of work and behavior in my class and it worked well.  Other kids in the class wanted to participate and a new form of motivation erupted in my class.

Reaching out:

             The following year one of my high honors students for her seminar project decided to overcome her fear of snakes and by the end of the year write a large sized short story about snakes for a first grade class.  Then she was going to take one of my snakes and her book and go back to her first grade teacher’s class and present her book and the snake.  Initially she could not even look in the windows of the “snake room” with out getting the shakes.

State funding:

             Someone mentioned to someone else and so on until an individual at the state level heard about what was going on with the animals in my room and the outreach that had happened.  I was approached to write a grant to expand this idea to go out with groups of students to teach at more than one elementary school.  The grant was accepted and now we have spread to 6 high schools and expect to present to over 5,000 elementary students by end of the 07-08 school year.

What do I get out of it?

             The HS students involved come from all cliques and subgroups in the schools.  Each student has to maintain passing grades and a C average to stay in the program.  Each kid needs a hook and reason to stay in school and succeed.  For some of these kids this is the reason.  They keep their grades up, behave in class and in the halls and generally improve their attitudes in school.  Some of these kids, before the program, spent too much time in suspension, detention or other trouble.  It gives them a sense of belonging to a group with similar interests. All the students get the opportunity to hang around kids they may not ever see otherwise.  Now with 7 High schools involved the students interact with kids from other schools sharing their lives and outlooks and begin to realize they are not that different even though they come from different places.  At each school these kids come in early to clean cages, they take the animals home in the summer, they study to create professional and interesting presentations for the elementary students they present to.

             The looks on the faces of the little kids are priceless.  For 90 minutes they sit quietly in awe of the HS kids who present these animals to them.  Some of the children have never seen the animals up close and certainly not hanging on kids from their neighborhood.  They listen intently and ask some fantastic questions.  Going to the same schools allows these students to see the growth and development of the animals and the HS students.

             I have seen many HS students changed by this program.  Some have decided to go on in science, others in education because of the effect the program has on them.

 

I got into teaching to make a difference. 

             Teaching approximately 100 kids a year in my classes is only part of that.  There are at times 200 kids in the program and we teach/reach thousands of elementary school students each year.  All of this impact has to be felt in a few kids each year.  If we reach a few each year then I am fulfilled.  Many times in the past ten years I have had little kids come to me in malls, stores and town centers to hug my knees and tell their parents that I am the snake man.  Even my daughter, now 9, is involved and her school system doesn’t have the program yet.   One of her dreams is to teach with me my last year and take over the program and continue to reach the younger children in the area.  I hope this happens.