Rats Visit Childs Elementary School To Help Celebrate Year Of The Rat
Local Rat Rescue Group Presents a Multimedia presentation on rats and
an opportunity for students to learn about and meet pet rats.
Principal Alphonso Evans of the George W Childs School of Philadelphia
has graciously invited Rat Chick Rat Rescue and Advocacy Group to present
a multimedia presentation to the students about the Chinese New Year &
Pet Rats. Students will learn about the Year of the Rat, real rat facts
and myths, see funny rat videos, and even get to meet a live pet rat.
“We are very excited about this wonderful opportunity to celebrate
The Chinese New Year at Childs School with my students,” Said
President and Founder of Rat Chick Rat Rescue and Advocacy Group Ms. Pandolfi.
She is also an art teacher at the school. “This is an excellent
opportunity to open up the minds of the students and staff about these
sweet but misunderstood little creatures.”
“I teach people about rats to get them to understand what prejudice
is. Once people meet the rats and learn about them, they learn that all
their negative beliefs are false, and that's when I connect it to all
other forms of prejudice. Once they learn how prejudice works the world
will be a better place to live.”
The event is not open to the general public and will be held at George
W Childs School 1541 South 17th Street, Philadelphia, PA on Thursday February
7th 2008.
Rat Chick Rat Rescue and Advocacy Group was formed in 2003 and is
an All Volunteer Pennsylvania and Federal 501(c)(3) Non-Profit Corporation.
Our goal is to find home for orphaned domestic rats and to advocate for
all rats. Through education and fun we can make this world a better place
for these wonderful, intelligent, clean and loving animals that are the
brunt of prejudice. By educating the public about prejudice and the misconceptions
surrounding these animals, maybe we can at least teach tolerance of them,
and perhaps of each other!
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Update - Rats Visit Childs Elementary School To Help Celebrate Year Of
The Rat
Principal Alphonso Evans of the George W Childs School of Philadelphia
has graciously invited Rat Chick Rat Rescue and Advocacy Group to present
a multimedia presentation to the students about the Chinese New Year &
Pet Rats.
George W Childs Elementary can best be described as a quaint old intercity
school with a diverse student body and a group of wonderful caring teachers
and staff.
Rat Chick Rat Rescue presented rat facts, happy rat videos and actual
companion rats to over 600 students.
The event was a great success!
Ms. Pandolfi opened each session telling the kids about Rat Chick Rat
Rescue and how the group works together with each member having a viewpoint
and making group decisions in an effort to teach the children about cooperation.
Mr. Doug then talked about his first companion rat that found him. Mom
Rat, an escaped feeder breeder, was living under his house and feeding
under the bird feeder in a community of birds, squirrels and doves. He
emphasized the fact that the rat was accepted by the other animals and
was part of the happy feeding group, and why as people we don’t
do the same.
Ms. Pandolfi then made the connection of preconception to prejudice
and explained how animals don’t prejudge each other so why should
humans. Based on my observations 90% of the students were hanging on every
word. If half that many thought about it the next day we won the war on
prejudice!
Next we showed the Rat Videos created by Doug B in a medley with some
funny rat commercials.
You can find the videos on Doug’s YouTube site at http://www.youtube.com/DougsJunk
The children loved the videos and were reading, dancing, laughing, eww-ing
and aww-ing thought the entire presentation. Of all the comments I got
for my videos on YouTube nothing compared to the approval I got from these
children.
After the video the children got to pet Ms. Pandolfi’s rat Buddy
and Mr. Doug’s rats Sugar, Spice, Mittsey and Muffin. You would
have thought we were handing out $100 bills as the children were fighting
to be first in line to get to pet a rat.
It was at that moment that I realized that these children are starving
for knowledge, any knowledge provided it was different or presented in
a fun way. I was honored to have the opportunity to teach them something
different and hope that that day will have a small impact on their lives.