About the Program
Welcome to the registration page for the Virtual Class Pet Program, hosted by Charlie's Acres Farm Animal Sanctuary. Thank you for making the compassionate choice to allow one of our rescued animal residents to become part of your classroom.
Click here to learn more about this year's 'adoptable' animals.
Charlie’s Acres’ Virtual Class Pet Program includes:
– An adoption certificate, photos, and information about your new class pet.
– Four 30-minute video calls with one of our humane education staff members and your class pet. These can be scheduled throughout the year, semester, or shorter unit, depending on your class’s needs. These calls will focus on humane education lessons that help students put themselves in an animal’s “shoes” and consider their feelings.
View our Virtual Class Pet Program curriculum.
This program is available for grades K-12 and is most appropriate for grades 2-8. For classes younger than Kindergarten age, please feel free to reach out to jenny@charliesacres.org for additional humane education options.
WHY A VIRTUAL CLASS PET?
While spending time with animals undoubtedly a valuable learning experience for all ages and has benefits such as learning care and responsibility, relieving stress, and developing empathy, it is important to consider the animal’s experience. A bright and busy classroom is a good environment for children but is overwhelming to most animals. Despite the best of intentions, class pets may become neglected and ultimately unwanted as the school year ends.
By symbolically adopting a rescued animal resident of Charlie’s Acres as your class pet, you create a safe opportunity for kids to learn about animals that is inclusive regardless of the school’s budget and location, or any allergies of students.
While students are enrolled in virtual learning, a virtual class pet is still accessible and can be a fun bonding experience.
WHY HUMANE EDUCATION?
Did you know that many states have curriculum requirements for humane and character education? This education involves teaching children to understand, care about, and act on core ethical values such as respect, justice, and responsibility for self and others.
Teaching kindness to animals is a natural component of these efforts. Developing empathy towards animals can be a key step in developing empathy for and rejecting violence against all beings, including humans. With bullying and youth violence rampant in schools today, it is essential to teach compassion and encourage kindness in your students.
About the Program
Welcome to the registration page for the Virtual Class Pet Program, hosted by Charlie's Acres Farm Animal Sanctuary. Thank you for making the compassionate choice to allow one of our rescued animal residents to become part of your classroom.
Click here to learn more about this year's 'adoptable' animals.
Charlie’s Acres’ Virtual Class Pet Program includes:
– An adoption certificate, photos, and information about your new class pet.
– Four 30-minute video calls with one of our humane education staff members and your class pet. These can be scheduled throughout the year, semester, or shorter unit, depending on your class’s needs. These calls will focus on humane education lessons that help students put themselves in an animal’s “shoes” and consider their feelings.
View our Virtual Class Pet Program curriculum.
This program is available for grades K-12 and is most appropriate for grades 2-8. For classes younger than Kindergarten age, please feel free to reach out to jenny@charliesacres.org for additional humane education options.
WHY A VIRTUAL CLASS PET?
While spending time with animals undoubtedly a valuable learning experience for all ages and has benefits such as learning care and responsibility, relieving stress, and developing empathy, it is important to consider the animal’s experience. A bright and busy classroom is a good environment for children but is overwhelming to most animals. Despite the best of intentions, class pets may become neglected and ultimately unwanted as the school year ends.
By symbolically adopting a rescued animal resident of Charlie’s Acres as your class pet, you create a safe opportunity for kids to learn about animals that is inclusive regardless of the school’s budget and location, or any allergies of students.
While students are enrolled in virtual learning, a virtual class pet is still accessible and can be a fun bonding experience.
WHY HUMANE EDUCATION?
Did you know that many states have curriculum requirements for humane and character education? This education involves teaching children to understand, care about, and act on core ethical values such as respect, justice, and responsibility for self and others.
Teaching kindness to animals is a natural component of these efforts. Developing empathy towards animals can be a key step in developing empathy for and rejecting violence against all beings, including humans. With bullying and youth violence rampant in schools today, it is essential to teach compassion and encourage kindness in your students.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What is Charlie's Acres?
Charlie's Acres is a nonprofit sanctuary providing a loving forever home to 140 rescued animal residents. As a sanctuary, our primary focus is the lifelong well-being of our animal residents. They live here without the fear of slaughter or the expectation to provide products, entertainment, or any other service. Our mission is to showcase the inherent value of each individual animal beyond their utility or profitability.
While we do not intend to vilify farmers, our goals and practices differ significantly from those of conventional farms, where animals are raised for consumption. Out of respect for our animal residents, many of whom originally came from farms, it is important to us that our educational programs reflect the reality of animals' lives and do not inadvertently present a sugarcoated view of animal agriculture. Therefore, to accurately convey the nature of our mission and the lives of our animal residents, we encourage teachers participating in our program to refer to Charlie's Acres as a 'sanctuary' when discussing where their class pet resides.
Learn more about the difference between a sanctuary and a farm here.
Q: How do we schedule meetings?
After you’ve registered for the Virtual Class Pet Program at www.charliesacres.org, you’ll receive a confirmation email with a Calendly link you can use to see our available times and schedule your meetings. All four meetings can be scheduled with this link. This link is only available to teachers who have registered for the program and is not posted publicly on our website. If you have trouble finding the link before scheduling one of your meetings, don’t hesitate to reach out to jenny@charliesacres.org so we can resend it to you!
Bear in mind that we are in California, USA and run on Pacific Time. If you do not see an available time that overlaps with the time you meet your class, please email jenny@charliesacres.org to explore options.
Q: Can multiple classrooms share a single registration and sign onto our video calls together?
Yes! Because spots are limited, if there are other classes at your school who meet at the same time as yours and would like to share the experience of the program with your class, we encourage teachers to participate with other classrooms at their school.
Q: When will I receive my class’s adoption certificate?
Expect to receive an email from jenny@charliesacres.org within a week with your class’s certificate, photos of your “class pet,” and a letter with their rescue story! Be sure to use an email address that is capable of receiving emails from outside organizations. Contact jenny@charliesacres.org if you don’t receive your confirmation email or your materials.
Q: What platform do you use for the video calls?
By default, when you schedule each meeting, a Zoom link will be automatically created that you can join at the time of our meeting. If you meet with your class virtually, this link can be shared with your students so that they can join the meeting from home.
If you would prefer to be the host of the meeting on Zoom or another platform, we are happy to join your meeting instead. There is a space on the form you’ll complete when scheduling each meeting where you can include your meeting link and pertinent joining information. If we see you’ve included your own link, we’ll plan on joining your meeting instead of hosting from the automatically generated Zoom link. We have successfully joined classes on Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Webex Meetings and are flexible to use any free platform. If you are required to use a paid platform through your school district to meet with your students, we have made it work through teachers screensharing in the past and are happy to work with you to see what’s possible!
Q: Will there be time for my students to ask questions?
We will leave time dedicated for students to ask questions during all of our meetings. Whether we have students ask their questions directly, have the teachers repeat questions for us, or have students leave their questions in the chat depends on what works best for each class!
Q: Will we see other animals during our meetings other than our class pet?
All of our animal residents live in groups, so you will be certainly be seeing lots of your class pet and all of their friends during our meetings! If we have time at the end of each meeting, we are happy to take your class to visit another group as well. This typically happens during the second, third, and fourth meetings.
Additional questions? Reach out to jenny@charliesacres.org or visit charliesacres.org to learn more about our organization.
Check out these testimonials from participating teachers!
"This was an amazing opportunity for my students. We can’t wait to do it again. You’ve showed my students how to have empathy for an animal that is disabled. You helped my second grader proudly connect with [his class pet] and his brother who is terminal and in a wheelchair, you have made our communities curriculum come alive!"
"Charlie's Acres staff really connected with my students, they learned not only about animals but how to treat animals and people with respect."
"Our VA standards of learning call for lessons in living and non-living things and the visits with Monroe and [the program] has given me a real-life example to refer back to throughout our class discussions."
"The students are learning a lot about Petunia and other rescue animals. They are learning empathy! I also love to see how excited they get each time we meet with Petunia and Jenny!"
"I loved how you tied in character traits, feelings of the animals and a sense of compassion and understanding in your lessons! Thank you!"
"Our students have loved getting to know all of the animals, not just the animal they adopted. I believe it has opened up a conversation about kindness to all creatures that might not have happened otherwise. Students were unaware of testing on animals in science, which led to lots of questions and a new understanding of science and kindness."
"Thank you so much for offering this! My class and I really enjoyed going to these meetings this past school year. My students were constantly asking when they would get to see their class pet again."
"I think [the program] should be utilized with as many children as possible. It helps them develop empathy and understanding with not just the farm animals, but with even their own pets or other animals they're exposed to."