Field Trip - Massacre

When I was turning the eggs at the end of the day on Thursday I noticed that one of them had a crack in it! I was pretty excited, my chickens were finally hatching. I knew that it would take awhile for the chicks to actually emerge so I left for home, looking forward to coming back to school on Friday to see my baby chicks.

I arrived at school early on Friday (about 6:45am) in order to check on the chicks and get ready for our field trip that we were taking to the Legacy Land Trust in North Houston. One chick had completely hatched and the others were well on their way.

My students were very excited about the chickens and some were hesitant to go on the field trip. Before we left for our trip, I sent out an email inviting the other teachers to take their classes on a tour to see the chicken being born. I really wanted to be there, but knew that the chickens would all be hatched by Monday so if I wanted to share the experience with the school I needed to let them observe when I was gone.



The bus ride was long and hot. The district provided us with one school bus (for 68 students and 6 chaperone's). We were very crowded and the air conditioning barely worked. When we got to the land trust it was about 90 degrees out and sunny. After spending all day outdoors and in the sun, my students were pretty quiet on the bus ride home. While at the land trust my students went on a nature walk, identified insects and other animals, used GPS to find their way in the woods, and found the oxygenation of water. Although the day was long, I feel the kids had a lot of good takeaways and it was a good opportunity to be outdoors, away from the city.

When we were on our field trip I received a call from another teacher at my school telling me that she thought my chickens were dying. I asked her what the temperature was in the incubator and she told me it was over 120 degrees. The incubator was set at 95 degrees when I left in the morning and had been consistently there for the last 21 days. While we were away a student must have played with the thermostat, drastically increasing the temperature for the chicks and unhatched eggs. I told the teacher how to fix the problem, but it was too late. My chicken, along with all of the chicks that were in the process of hatching had been killed.

I am very disappointed in the students of my school, but more importantly the teachers who brought their kids through to see the chicks and did not closely supervise their students. If the teacher had been watching their kids, there is no way that the thermostat could have been adjusted over 25 degree.

When my students got back to school there was a mixture of emotions. Some of the students were very sad, while others were very mad. My students were mad at me for sharing "our chicks" with the rest of the school. They told me that it was dumb of me to share and that that is what happens when you let other people use your stuff... they break it. Unfortunately, these are not the takeaways I want my students to learn at school, but today, I tended to agree with their findings. I am pretty sad that after taking care of these eggs for 21 days that someone could kill the chicks in the few hours that I shared them with the school.

Instead of having the gardening club help take care of the chicks after school like I planned, we ended up having a funeral.