Class Time

Today me and the other senior project students sat in on an animal class. The museum offers classes for school field trips where they can learn and interact with the live animals in Perkins and the Animal Center. The staff members thought it would be fun for the the senior project-ers to sit in and watch Harvey Webster, the head honcho in Perkins teach the class. There were two school classes there; one from Newbury Elementary and one from an inner city school. Both classes were in 2nd grade. Obviously, one of the major problems with teaching little kids is that they can't focus for very long. However, Harvey knew how to handle them. The first animal he used was Rocky, a painted turtle. After explaining how he lived and stuff, he quickly took out Shelby, our Eastern Box Turtle, shifting their attention to a new and exciting animal before they could get bored. Then he proceeded to show the kids Dixie the opossum, Lilac the skunk, Meep the Red-Tail Hawk, and Onyx the Black Rat Snake. The class was very educational, even for us! We learned quite a bit about how these animals lived and how they came to live in our museum. It was exciting seeing Meep, a hawk that actually HATES females interact the students. When she was younger she was raised by only females and so she imprinted on them. As she grew up, her imprinting actually made her want to attack females (her way of showing affection we assume). However, now we (females) cannot go anywhere near her cage. So, seeing her sitting on Harvey's arm all regal and calm was very cool. It was a very educational and fun morning!