CLEVELAND — At some schools, the class pet may be a hamster or a lizard, but a second-grade class at Saint Adalbert Catholic School is taking a different approach.
They currently have three pet chickens in the classroom and four full-grown chickens in a coop outside.
“I was very concerned it would be a distraction for the students, but it turned out to be the opposite. They were a complement to our classroom because the children took on the empathy role. They take care of them, they nurture them, and it showed them a whole different way of caring for things as well as caring for our environment,” said second-grade teacher Melissa Hennigan.
Hennigan started the project over a year ago when these students were in the first grade, allowing them to see the chickens start off as eggs and grow into what they are today.
“We candled them while they were in the incubator, we were able to candle them to see if they were viable eggs. The students get to chart how many we thought we're going to hatch, and then we did have some hatch and then unfortunately a couple of them just didn't make it. So, we had to have a lesson about what happens with that,” said Hennigan.
Now, as a second grader, Parker Hughes has grown very fond of the chickens; Principal Jamie Smith said he visits her office often with a pet chicken.
“I never had a chicken growing up, and now I feel like it would be cool at home,” said Parker.
Once the first batch of chickens was fully grown, they were moved to an outside coop where Smith enjoys teaching kids how to clean the coop and talk about different aspects of chickens.
“It’s just random things like that that a student in an inner-city school may not have the opportunity to learn otherwise," said Smith." So, we're putting on programs and lessons around an urban farming sort of program. We want to bring agriculture and farming in this capacity to our students because it's not something that they're going to get in the general neighborhood."
Originally, the project was supposed to be a quick project, but it has now turned into a fun program for the students.
“I enjoy playing [with] the chickens outside, taking care of them and learning what makes chickens great," said Hughes.
The school is now looking to expand the program by building a farm and a garden.
“We can show that growth and show how we can eat from our gardens as well as continuing our chicken project, and I’m trying to talk them into getting a goat, but I don’t know how that’s gonna go,” said Hennigan.
