As the nation welcomes the Year of the Rooster, Dashan Elementary School principal Hsu Ching-hung (徐慶宏) talked about teaching students about life and nature by raising chickens on campus.
Hsu, who is also the deputy convener of the nature education section of the Miaoli County Government’s public education advisory group, said he started using chicken-raising as an educational aid when he received a donation of live chickens from a professor of medical biotechnology when he was the principal at Daping Elementary School in Miaoli.
Hsu said he knew nothing about raising chickens at the time, but learned how to do so together with his students.
Photo provided by Hsu Ching-hung
Hsu said he had to convert his office into a hatchery with heat lamps one winter to keep the chickens warm when the weather turned cold.
To keep the school clean, students help with cleaning the coop and the campus every morning, he said.
Chicken excrement is collected to be added to the compost pile for the school’s vegetable garden, he added.
Many of the school’s students volunteer to help him first thing in the morning after arriving in school, and have found it to be a “happy” experience, especially when they see a chick hatching, he said.
Dashan Elementary School’s life education classes teach pupils in the lower grades to identify animals in their environment, and those in the higher grades to observe and understand animal behavior, such as feeding and mating, Hsu said.
Students at the school treat the chicks like their pets, while the birds also get used to human contact, Hsu said.
Interacting with chicks seem to have a calming effect on children, making them more sociable and well-behaved, he said.
The school’s chickens have plenty to eat, including feeds, leftovers, worms and bugs in the compost area near the coop, the principal said.
While the chickens at the various schools where he served as principal were never slaughtered for meat, their lives are not without risks, Hsu said.
For one, the chickens at Daping Elementary School were often threatened and sometimes killed by stray dogs, he said.
That prompted the students to build a dog-proof coop with the help of their carpentry teacher to protect the birds, Hsu said, adding that it became a teaching opportunity for math and science.
Birds of prey also often attack the chickens at Dashan, with the students once witnessing a hawk swoop down and kill a hen, Hsu said.
“The children were upset, angry and crying,” Hsu said.
The teachers were shocked, but it also compelled them to teach children about “death, which is part of life education,” Hsu said.
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