I work in a special needs classroom in an Elementary school and last year my husband and I got the class a corn snake (one of our burms was out of the questions!!). We not only use the snake for educational purposes (we use him to learn basic things like color, length, position (the snake is "under" his aspen, the snake is "in" his hide, etc...), texture (snake is soft, cage is hard), but as an incentive as well, the snake is usually hid most of the day but if the students have performed well thru the week we take it out and let them touch it.

I am fortunate enough to have some of my students during the summer and our burms have always been great learning tools-I have gotten children to sign or verbalize such things as "I want to hold snake" or "Snake is yellow". I have had a child tell me "Fiona loves me" (Fiona is one of my larger females)-this was an autistic child who up until this point was terrified of any animal and would sit with me and just pet her for over an hour. I think it is amazing to watch kids with reptiles.