Chicken Vacation... that piqued your interest right?!? What you might ask is a chicken vacation? Why would a chicken need a vacation? Or maybe someone is taking a vacation to a chicken farm? The questions that the simple title created are endless.... so let me give you some background.
I teach fourth grade at a STEM school in Georgia. We are blessed with 42 acres of land. About 4 years ago, one of the women on my team decided to incubate chickens. She had chickens at home and thought it would be a great project for the kids. These kids loved it, built a coop, a run, and loved them endlessly.
Bram, my team member, recruited me the next year to participate in the project. I jumped in with both feet and embraced all things chicken. Chicken poop... doesn't even phase me. Chickens squawking and flying out of their brooder... I don't even flinch. I just keep right on talking. We love our fine feathered friends with all we have.
These amazing creatures live their early life in a brooder in our classrooms. We incubated the eggs early in January, watched them hatched, and have raised them with love and care. These little guys and gals are the center of many lessons, great for Social, Emotional Learning, and provide constant amusement.
You are still wondering about the vacation... right? I am getting there! Our feathered classmates can not survive over the weekends or on the days when we are being fogged. Someone has to care for them - so the kids wrote a letter to their parents, outlining all the responsibilities, and asking their parents to let them take them on "vacation" to their house for the weekend and/or Wednesday. They were very serious about this letter, requiring a signature from their parents to ensure that they would be good chicken tenders - their words, not mine.
This afternoon, one lucky fourth-grader and his parents, arrived at 2:00 to claim their chickens for their vacation. The moms and dads that pick them up, arrive with such trepidation and drop them off after their duty is fulfilled with a sense of awe. We have many converted chicken tenders in our class - many parents who go out and build coops in their yards. We have kids that have talked aunts, uncles, and grandparents into "adopting" their chick for a permanent vacation.
So, you see chicken vacation is a real thing. The question is: Who really is on vacation the chickens or the family of chicken tenders?
Chicken tenders!!! Outstanding. So cool to see how the same job is different in other places. I am aware that not all schools in Georgia are unique in quite this way, but your post made me start thinking about how we can all work in the same profession and have it be so different all over the place. So thank you very much for the thought-provoking nature of this post. So cool!
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