A little surprise left in my classroom.

It's Friday!! Need I say more?

When I leave my classroom each day to go home, I have to leave my door open for the cleaning ladies. They lock it when they are through sweeping it.

I don't like leaving the door open like that. I worry the lady might forget to lock the door before she leaves. If someone were to break into the building, my classroom would by wide open to burglary, and many of my personal belongings, including books, supplies, and materials that I have paid for, could be stolen, not to mention the nice Apple Computer, the laptop, and other valuable books and materials that belong to the school. Fortunately, it has never happened.

The most that has ever been stolen from my classroom was six years ago when a pack of twelve yellow highlighters that I had purchased at Office Depot, when they were on sale, had disappeared from my desk. Found them in a 4th grade student's desk. Of course, he denied it when confronted, but after spending 20 minutes with the principal, he confessed. I forgave him, and never had another thing missing after that.

This morning, however, I walked into my classroom and discovered that before the cleaning ladies locked the door last night, a student had visited my classroom. He didn't take anything. Instead, he left me something, along with a note to explain what he had done.

I had left the butterfly pavillion in my classroom overnight. The polyphemus beauty had flown off onto her brief nuptial adventure yesterday morning (see previous entry for details: http://journals.aol.com/bgilmore725/Wanderer/entries/1091 ).

But with the spring weather comes lots of critters, and the kids have been bringing me their discoveries, either to ask me what it is, or to ask me to put it in the butterfly pavillion to keep it. I allowed a couple of caterpillars to remain.

It seems that yesterday afternoon, after I had gone home, and my door was still open, a certain fifth grade student who goes to our after school day care program, found several fat tent caterpillars. He placed them in my net-like habitat, and left me a note that read: Dear Mrs. Gilmore. I found some more catapillers. I put them in the cage. He signed his name.

How sweet (said with a note of sarcasm) ... now there are two tent caterpillars cocooning in the habitat, with three more looking to do the same. Pesty, leaf-eating caterpillars that will turn into little reddish brown moths in three weeks...

I just don't have the same heart for these little ones as I did the polyphemus. Maybe it's because there are thousands of the tent caterpillars and they are so easy to find. Just walk anywhere outside and you'll step on one or one hundred. What a mess they make in the parking lot and on the sidewalks.

They cause unsightly defoliation of a tree when numerous, although trees usually recover from the onslaught and put out new leaves. You've seen them: after they hatch from their egg mass of up to 400 eggs, they build a silken nest in the crotch of a tree limb. They seem to prefere wild cherry, apple, crabapple, hawthorn, maple, peach, pear, and plum trees.

However, don't confuse them with the webworm, which weave their loose, webby nests around foliage in the tree. TC usually do their work in the early part of the season, while the unsightly webworms stake out later in the season.

Yippee! Yet, for the sake of education and the kids who found the little squirts in the first place, I will keep them, and we will use the cocoons as a topic for learning, only this time, we won't have to wait six months.

Do you see how students contribute to the teacher's learning? Look at the research I have to do so I can tell them about what they have found! Yes, I do direct them to the internet to do their own research, but not every kid has internet access, nor does every kid have a computer at home. Someday, yes someday, that will be as common as the TV is now.

Don't you think?