Eagle Rock teacher creates insect monitor job to treat creatures respectfully

Los Angelas "Daily News" ^ | 2/5/08 | Naush Boghossian

[WakeUpAndVote]

What fish eats them, I thought they were not eaten by anything.

I did bag a bug last year, 5 of them. At peak I was changing them out once a day.

[bicyclerepair]

I always trap spiders and lizards etc. then relocate them outside. They contribute to the ecosystem.

[girlangler]

A laugh for you and Mr. Grammy.

[trisham]

Too bad it’s too cold here for bugs.

[cripplecreek]

The bluegills take them off the surface. I don’t know if they eat them but they disappear from my sight and that’s good enough for me.

[girlangler]

“One the other hand I get a special pleasure out of collecting Japanese beetles by the hundreds and throwing them in the lake for the fish.”

Great idea, I never thought of it. Now I know what to do with the beetles when they invade my rose bushes this year.

[ukie55]

When Eagle Rock teacher Melodie Conrad saw a student stomp on a bug several years ago, she knew she had to do something.

God help us that people like this are *teaching* our children.

[jazusamo]

Leave it to a teacher in Eagle Rock to teach PC.

A little violence is good for our kids, especially in the form of bug killing. If they’re indoors, they’re fair game. LOL

Outdoors is a different story.

[hdstmf]

Meantime there is no time for teaching the kiddies the three R’s.

[ukie55]

"Once they understand it's not harmful, they don't hurt them, and they become a little bit more tolerant."

If I don't recognize it, I'm not taking any chances.

Not harmful? Tell that to someone who's allergic to them.

[Marko413]

As long as the bug isn’t deadly or thrive on trash (i.e. flies, cockroaches, etc), I’ll scoop them up and toss them out the window.

Still... a bug monitor job? I think that’s a bit much. I do this because I choose to, but I don’t lose sleep over the fact that others don’t. Nor am I going to try and force others to do it.

[Between the Lines]

Kinda makes me wish for some type of infestation. Locusts perhaps. ; )

[Charles Martel]

I'm guessing that *this* isn't on the reading list:

[wagglebee]

"I absolutely just feel like we live in a society where violence is prevalent, and I've seen that over the years I've been teaching. I just wanted to be careful that they're exposed to just the opposite in this room," said Conrad, a 21-year teaching veteran.

There are over 275,000 abortions per year in California (more than one out of three pregnancies in California ends with an abortion), is she teaching them about THIS uneccessary violence?

[Doomonyou]

If it was my classroom...

[GovernmentShrinker]

Sounds good to me. There’s something wrong with a kid whose first instinct upon seeing something that’s alive and not bothering them is to kill it. It’s not a bad thing to nip such habits in the bud.

[SoldierDad]

Well, since I’m no longer in uniform (these past 30 years), I’m not too concerned on that score. Plus, I don’t post things on UTUBE

[GovernmentShrinker]

You appoint other people’s children to stop doing their school work and take a bug outside?

Given what passes for school work in many public schools, this is probably a positive thing. What's wrong with missing a few minutes of the umpteenth lecture on how global warming is going to kill us all?

[YankeeGirl]

I’ll always remember my 2nd grade teacher who made us tippy toe outside to see a praying mantis coming out of a cocoon in the schoolyard. She made a big deal about how it was illegal to kill them because they were protected by law since they ate other bad insects. This was in 1960 something, before the environmental wackos were loose.

She gave me a profound respect for nature.

I do hate bugs, give me a mouse, or even a rat any day. But I will not kill a spider in the house either. That might be a Spanish custom (?) that my mother passed on (bad luck etc...)

[YankeeGirl]

Actually it may have been a cocoon full of the little critters? The details are vague now. But it was a praying mantis! Second grade was a very long time ago.