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Creeping Up On Crawlers

Crystal L. Lauderdale/Tampa Tribune

Gaither High School biology teacher Jerry Murray coaches 3-year-old Matthew Korloch in how to hold a tarantula. Korloch is part of Gaither high's Little Wranglers pre-school program.

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By COURTNEY CAIRNS PASTOR, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 3, 2007

Updated: 11/01/2007 09:45 pm

Additional Photos

NORTHDALE - To preschoolers in a high school science lab, anything is possible.

Advanced Placement biology teacher Jerry Murray displayed scorpion skeletons, horseshoe crab shells and butterfly wings. When he brought out the shark jaws and cow skull, 4-year-old Alaina Garcia was sure she knew what they were.

"Dinosaur!" she guessed both times.

As a Little Wrangler, Alaina gets to experience both day care and high school. For 17 years, Gaither High has offered the early childhood development program, which allows high school students to get experience planning lessons and taking care of 3- to 5-year-olds in a working day care.

Twenty-two children, some relatives of faculty members, are enrolled this year.

Teacher Becky Burgue supervises the high school students and oversees their care of the preschool children. Their converted home economics classroom overlooks an outside play area and has miniature tables and chairs, a rug for story time and songs and brightly decorated bulletin boards.

Fourteen teens come up with lessons, songs, snacks and activities that follow weekly themes. When they need to supplement a topic with a field trip, the group often just walks down the high school halls.

A visit to Gaither's agriculture department recently let the children pet goats and other animals housed on the school grounds. Anna Muniz, a senior who works with the Little Wranglers, said it was exciting to see her high school peers interact with the preschoolers.

"They were down on their level, and they worked so well with them," said Muniz, 17. "Everyone gets really excited when the kids come."

In Murray's biology class, his students took a break from the college-level curriculum and giggled and fawned over the children's responses. The biology field trip, an annual visit, coincides with the Little Wranglers' "Creepy Crawley" unit. This week they would do "Dramatic Dress-Up" for the letter D, capped with a costumed storybook parade in the school.

Muniz said high school students enrolled in the early childhood program take turns fleshing out the themes. For Creepy Crawley, they taught their charges the song about the old lady who swallows a fly and served crackers made to look like spiders and ladybugs made of strawberry ice cream and chocolate sprinkles.

Murray's class brought them up close to things that slither and sneak.

The preschoolers reached forward to pet Boss the boa constrictor, and high school girls in the class shrank against the walls. The children raised their hands for turns to pet Rosie the tarantula.

"Are you sure you're real brave?" Murray asked the class.

"I'm real brave," said 3-year-old Krista Bump.

All animals are wild, Murray told the children, so they need to be careful handling them, even their pets. They should never go into the garden and pick up spiders, either, he said.

"But we need to water plants," Christopher Byrn said.

Alaina said later she didn't mind seeing the snake and spider up close. "I'm not afraid of anything in the whole wide world," she said.

Her classmate, 3-year-old Avery Pellizze, wasn't crazy about it.

"I'm afraid of a doggie," she said. "I'm afraid of anything. Except cats."

Reporter Courtney Cairns Pastor can be reached at (813) 865-1503 or cpastor@tampatrib.com.

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