👩🏫 Stacey Fernandez, M.A.
Gifted education teacher, Albuquerque Public Schools — classroom content reviewer for WhatPetShouldIGet.com.
Stacey has taught K-8 for more than a decade in New Mexico, Virginia, and Georgia — mathematics, algebra, information technology, and STEAM — and now teaches gifted education for Albuquerque Public Schools, holding New Mexico’s Gifted Education Endorsement. She reads our classroom pages the way a teacher reads a lesson plan: for whether the advice would actually survive a real classroom, a real school schedule, and a real group of children.
📖 What Stacey reviews here
Her review covers the pages below — the ones written for teachers, and the ones about whether an animal suits a child. Every other page on this site is written and checked the same way it always was; a reviewer's name appears only where that reviewer actually read the page.
- The Best Classroom Pets (Teacher-Approved Picks)
- The Best Classroom Pets for Elementary School
- Low-Maintenance Classroom Pets That Survive the Weekend
- Free Classroom Pet Toolkit for Teachers
- Free Printable Pet Care Checklists
- The Best First Pets for Kids and Beginners
- The Best Pets for Young Kids (Ages 5–8)
- Pets That Don’t Bite: The Gentlest Pets for Kids
- The Best Pets Kids Can Actually Hold — and the Ones They Can't
- Worst First Pets for Kids (and What to Get Instead)
🎓 Qualifications
- M.A. in Secondary Education — Fairleigh Dickinson University
- B.A. in Mathematics — Fairleigh Dickinson University
- New Mexico teaching license — Elementary and Middle School Mathematics — New Mexico Public Education Department
- New Mexico Gifted Education Endorsement — New Mexico Public Education Department
- Virginia teaching license — Middle School Mathematics with Algebra endorsement — Virginia Department of Education
🏫 Classroom experience
Stacey has taught mathematics, algebra, information technology and STEAM across elementary and middle school in three states, written supplemental curriculum for a school district, and planned and co-taught with English-language and special-education teachers. She has designed instruction for general-education, autism, life-skills, IEP and 504 students in the same room — which is the part that matters most here, because a classroom pet has to work for every child in the class, not the average one.
✅ What "reviewed" means on this page
It means a working teacher read the page and told us where it was wrong about classrooms: a care routine that assumes someone is in the building at the weekend, a job chart that would not survive a real rotation, an animal recommended for an age group it does not suit, advice that quietly assumes a budget or a room a school does not have. Where she disagreed, the page changed.
It does not mean she is the source for veterinary claims. Species care — housing sizes, diet, health, welfare minimums — is checked against veterinary and animal-welfare sources, and those are listed on each page. How we work sets out that process in full.
🛡️ Disclosures
No employer endorsement. Stacey reviews these pages as an individual teacher, on her own time. Her school and her school district are not affiliated with this site, have not reviewed it, and have not endorsed it.