Classroom Pets

8/24/09
Tedi and I got to work an hour early this morning, just like most other days. I sat on the steps leading to our circle area and planned out word study for the day as Tedi looked through math resources. She walked to the sink to fill her water bottle and and smiled, looking at up me. “Don’t freak out…”, she started, “But there is a huge scorpion in our sink.”

I sigh. I’m getting used to this. Last night we had dinner at a co-worker’s house. She told me that the former occupant of my house caught quite a few rats last year. Cool…I have yet to see signs of rodents in the house but mention that maybe I’ll get a rattrap as a precaution. “Yeah…” my co-worker agreed quietly. “Get a big one.”

After a few minutes my curiosity got the better of me and I wandered over to the sink and peeked inside. Huge? Hardly. Maybe three inches total including tail and pinchers. Eso no es nada. I returned to my planning.

Of course, when the students arrived they discovered our visitor immediately (how do they do that?) and it took some repetition to focus them on schoolwork. Later in the morning the scorpion was gone – “Our friend escaped”, Tedi commented. Hmm, I liked it better when I knew where that little dude was.

At lunchtime I had lunch duty, which means that I am one of three teachers who has to eat outside, keep an eye on the kids and mark the time. As soon as I sat down next to Heather, a high school math and science teacher, one of my third grade boys approached me. His face was strained – he was holding back tears. “Someone killed the scorpion!”, he blurted out, all of his tears following. I asked if he was sure it had been killed, and not just dead.
“Was it crushed? “
“Yes!” Oh dear.
“Would you like to take it outside on a piece of paper and put it in the woods?”
“Yes!” He turned and headed quickly to the classroom with me right on his heels. Kids here are pretty comfortable with snakes, spiders and scorpions, but I wasn’t sure I should leave him alone with this stinging creature.

We approached the sink and looked inside. I didn’t see anything. “See?”, said the student through his tears. I leaned closer. Inside the drain I see a few scorpion legs clinging to the side. It did not look crushed. I suggested we touch it gently to make sure it was dead. “Yeah”, agrees my companion. Sniffle, sniffle. I took out a pencil and gently pushed a leg. The scorpion moved slightly.

“It’s still alive! It just climbed into the drain to hide,” I reported. “Did you see it move?”
“Yeah!” Tears – gone. Sniffles – done. Grin – huge. I gave my student an awkward hug and told him how lucky I felt to have such a kind, caring young man in my class. I want him to feel proud of his tears. Or at least not ashamed or weak.
The student and I came up with a plan of action that he repeated word for word to Tedi when we step outside. “We’re just gonna let the scorpion chill in the sink. And then as a class we can come up with a gender neutral name and keep it as a pet.”
Wow. He was really listening to what I was saying. Maybe I should be more aware of my grammar and vocabulary use. This is not a child that says “chill”. Oops.

Tedi agrees to the plan and the student runs off to play. Later on during recess the same third grade boy rushed over to me with a huge smile on his face. “Look!”, he exclaimed, out of breath. He was standing next to his friend in the class below him and gently turned him around so he was facing away from me. Perched on the back of his friend’s head was a four inch stick bug. My third grader was cracking up. “It was climbing all over his head and neck and face!” This child is in heaven here in Monteverde. I’m just glad the scorpion is still alive. (Did I really just type that?)