Some of the people here are making excellent points about the cleaning crew. If I'm remembering this right, they tended to mess with the corn snake enclosure once in a while. Not exactly great for the little guy.
Oh, and if you're using an Exo Terra (sounds like you might be, not sure) be wary of the locks. I've had issues with them being faulty. Thought I'd let you know, it can lead to some fun escapes. I've been taking care of that one school's corn snake and he's ended up in a closed cabinet and halfway in a drawer... working on getting him a new cage for obvious reasons...
You know what? I think the suggestion of bringing the snake in once in a while but not keeping it there is an awesome idea. You get the best of two worlds. The students get to see the animal and interact with it, but the snake is still kept in a quiet, stress-free environment. I would try decorating the classroom with pictures of various ball python morphs (and a picture of a normal) with labels and change the morphs a month or more. Start with single genes at the beginning of the year and end with multi-gene masterpieces. Keep a number on the wall of the current number of morphs on WOBP and change it weekly, but don't say what the number means. If a student asks, tell them that it's the number of colors that the species comes in. Everyone who has asked about why I keep snakes is immediately wowed by the number of colors and almost always start asking me questions. Put a list of three ball python fun facts on the wall and change it every few weeks. If you wanted to, you could even put some books on ball pythons out and let students look at them. Combine all of that with bringing in an actual ball python every once in a while, and I think you have the recipe for a curious group of students that will be asking questions about the snakes. It might be even better to only bring the snake in infrequently because it would become more of a novelty for the students that way. I think that's the perfect way to create a classroom of snake-friendly kids while being friendly to your snake.![]()








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