Students at Whitman Middle School learn life skills through chicken care
Whitman Middle School students care for the flock of Novogen browns, cleaning the coop, helping feed them and gathering eggs.
Image: Moriah Ratner/For The Washington Post
On a sunny morning in a small courtyard at Walt Whitman Middle School in Virginia, a 14-year-old with a purple buzz cut cradled a plump chicken in her arms.
'Her name is Betsy,' Maicy Nealy, an eighth-grader at the Alexandria school, said as the animal's eyes softly fluttered shut in her lap.
As a young child, Nealy was afraid of chickens. Now she spends hours after school collecting their eggs and cleaning the coop for the school's five hens. And though she says she was never an outdoorsy type, she feeds them their worm meals as well.
The chicken program at Whitman started about a year ago when after-school program specialist Lee Maguire - a.k.a. 'Chicken Daddy' - planned a month-long embryo development program for kids to learn about biology and anatomy.
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Walt Whitman Middle School eighth-graders Jonas Figueroa, left, and Maicy Nealy hold chickens in the courtyard at the Alexandria school.
Image: Moriah Ratner/For The Washington Post
Maguire runs a variety of programs but has an affinity for agriculture. He studied resilient and sustainable communities in graduate school, he said.
The egg incubator soon became a mainstay at the campus in spring 2024. As the eggs hatched, so did interest among Whitman students, who filed in and out of Maguire's office to see the fetuses developing and then started visiting him to pet the babies.
'They've known them since they were the little yellow, fuzzy, down, cute little morsels,' Maguire said.
Whitman staff saw how much the kids enjoyed spending time with the chickens and decided to keep them around indefinitely, Maguire said.
And as the seventh-graders who interacted with the babies one year ago transitioned into eighth-graders, the chicks transitioned into red-feathered, yellow-eyed adult hens.
A chicken tries to escape from the arms of Whitman eighth-grader Savannah Lee
Image: Moriah Ratner/For The Washington Post
The kids soon got attached to the chickens and the chickens to the kids. The chickens even recognize the kids' faces and voices, Maguire added, and waddle toward the door when they spot the students arriving.
Throughout the school year, staff said, they've observed students gaining not only companionship from the animals but some life skills as well.
The students replenish the feed supply - which costs about $25 for 50 pounds - with proceeds from selling some of the eggs the chickens produce at $5 to $10 a dozen. Maguire noted that the programme's inception coincided with a rising market demand for cheaper eggs.
'We got super lucky that egg prices skyrocketed so it seemed like, 'Whoa, what a deal,'' Maguire said. 'It also builds their ability to understand how to make a program sustainable and lasting.'
As the chickens ambled over to the coop and pecked at the air for a snack, Nealy approached the food supply and asked Maguire about the feed bucket.
For the teen, the chickens provided structure after school and piqued her interest in agriculture. She's even forgiven the one that snatched her bracelet, Nealy said, stroking its back as the bird opened its tiny, narrow mouth and yawned.
Now she can't imagine an adulthood without chickens involved.
'I want to at least own five. Max … maybe max … 15 max,' she said, adding that when she grows up, she plans to be 'a lawyer that owns chickens.'
Savannah Lee, 14, said the chicken caretaking became a nice way to unwind and de-stress after school. She also takes pride in knowing her work is contributing to their quality of life.
'Animals can live better if other animals help take care of them,' Lee said, patting a pressure point on a chicken's neck to relax her.
And the benefit goes both ways. Spending time with the chickens helps Lee manage feelings of frustration and anger that may flare up during the day, she said. The chickens' calming presence on campus is an advantage of the program that the school's social workers and counselors quickly picked up on as well, Maguire said. They sometimes escort struggling students outside to the coop to help them calm down or sort through their feelings.
'It's a moment that they don't have to think about housing insecurity, food insecurity, if their parents are going to get deployed, how they're going to have to improve their grades because they're struggling,' he said. 'The chickens don't judge, they just love them. It's a peaceful escape.'
Said Jonas Figueroa, 14: 'They comfort you, instead of you comforting them.'
Figueroa isn't particularly interested or strong in academics, he said. He participates in sports but isn't terribly coordinated, either. The chicken work is where he excels, he said.
'I'm doing school subjects and I'm thinking, 'I'm not really good at this.' But then it leads you to think, 'What are my talents really?' And then you come out to the chickens and you realize you can put a chicken to sleep and you're like, 'Oh, I guess I'm good at handling chickens,'' Figueroa said.
As the school year comes to an end, the chickens and the students prepare to part ways. The students will go home and brace for starting high school, while the chickens will spend the summer shacked up with Maguire. But first, he has a surprise he's going to let the kids in on soon.
'I bought more baby chicks,' he said. 'I got them eight more.'
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Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. 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IOL News
3 days ago
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In villages outside Kyiv, Elina Sutiahyna, 64, and Nadiia Tkachenko, also 64, friends who ran small kiosks in the same market, heard through volunteers about Zhuzha's front-line puppies who needed homes. Sutiahyna adopted one and named him Avdyusha, after Avdiivka, the city Kulivets's battalion defended. The dog now assists Sutiahyna's husband, who had a stroke, acting 'as his eyes and ears,' she said. Tkachenko took another and named him Archie. 'To me it was important to help an animal from the front line,' she said. 'If you see these videos of soldiers with animals, you can't help but just cry.' 'Not normal anymore to buy dogs' Early in the war, Hanna Rudyk, deputy director of Kyiv's Khanenko Museum, left home with her young daughter, Silviia. They moved to Germany, and her husband, Artem, unable to travel due to martial law banning men from leaving the country, stayed behind. 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Serhii Piatkov, 35, already had one dog - Leonardo, a Russian toy terrier named for the Ninja Turtle - when he started donating about $25 a month to an animal shelter in Kyiv. In July 2024, the shelter held an adoption drive. Piatkov, who runs an advertising firm, stopped by and locked eyes with a black and white border collie mix with freckled legs. Rescued at just a few months old from Toretsk, he was now surrounded by dogs with severe disabilities. The dog looked like he didn't belong, Piatkov thought. A few days later, he took him home. Keeping with the Ninja Turtles theme, he named him Donatello - Doni for short. 'He's my small bear,' he said. 'Dogs are friends and partners' Three-year-old Lisa doesn't mind when air raid sirens blare in Kyiv, because that means her owner, Olesya Drashkaba, comes to hide by Lisa's bed in the hallway. Lisa is named for the eastern Ukrainian city where she was born, Lysychansk - which Russian forces seized in 2022. Drashkaba, an artist, was abroad early in the war, but when she moved back to Kyiv and opened her empty apartment, she immediately knew she was going to need a dog. Friends shared photos of Lisa, who had recently been rescued from the east, and Drashkaba fell in love with the funny strawberry-blond mutt. Lisa adapted quickly to her life bouncing between Drashkaba's studio, exhibitions and trendy cafes in central Kyiv. She catches the attention of so many passersby that Drashkaba met her now-partner when he stopped to say hello to Lisa. 'I think it's very good that people finally understand that dogs are friends and partners and even maybe more,' she said. Olha Kotlyarska, 29, likes to point out that because of the war, she and her dog, Khvoya, are both on antidepressants. Kotlyarska is a lawyer assisting investigations into alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine. Khvoya is a shepherd mix who was born in Avdiivka and cared for by Ukrainian troops until volunteers moved her and her siblings to safety in January 2024. Russia seized control of Avdiivka shortly after. Khvoya's adjustment to a more peaceful life in Kyiv has not always been easy. 'In the beginning she was scared of everything and everyone on the street,' Kotlyarska said. With training, medication and love, she's making slow progress. 'It still takes a lot for her to not be in panic mode, and it's still something that we are working on,' Kotlyarska said. 'The saddest dog ever' Russian forces had advanced in the Zaporizhzhia region and were heavily shelling the town of Orikhiv in late 2023 when Ukrainian volunteers drove in, searching for a dog they had been asked to find and rescue. Then a different scruffy black dog ran in front of their car. The volunteers could see he was unwell, with overgrown hair, wounds and a collar digging into his neck. He went running. They chased him into a basement, where they found Ukrainian troops sheltering from Russian attacks. The soldiers helped usher the dog into a crate, and between artillery rounds the volunteers fled with him. Back in Kyiv, Kateryna Lytvynenko, 37, saw a shelter post photos of 'the saddest dog ever.' The human rights adviser at Save the Children had fostered several dogs already, including one her dad adopted. She wanted her own and hoped to find one from her home region of Zaporizhzhia. When she met him, she wept. Here was this abandoned dog, from the front line near where she grew up, hair shaved and with sad brown eyes begging her for a home. She took him home the next day and named him Marko. One week after Marko's adoption, a tiny brown dog was born in the same town on Christmas. Volunteers evacuated the puppy to Kyiv, where so many applications flooded in to take her that 'it was like trying to rent an apartment in a prime location in the center of Kyiv,' recalled Dmytro Kustov, 29, a stretching coach who eventually won out. Born in a desolate place, Kari, whom Kustov calls his 'clever, sneaky little fox,' now attends all his stretching classes and has a wardrobe of miniature winter clothes and boots. 'It's our dog' Days after Russian troops retreated from their bloody assault on the Kyiv region in 2022, Dmytro Slivnyi, 41, was rushing supplies to the besieged areas when he came across a big, lonely dog by the road. When it was time to return home, he called his wife, Oleksandra Berezovska, and told her, 'I'm coming back - but not alone.' The couple, who already had two dogs, washed her, named her Golda and fostered her until a friend adopted her. 'When they left, I said to my husband, 'It's a mistake - it's our dog,'' Oleksandra recalled. When their friend deployed to the front line, Golda ended up back with Dmytro and Oleksandra, and eventually they decided she would stay for good. Around the same time, Ukrainian photojournalist Anastasia Vlasova was documenting the aftermath of Russia's atrocities near Kyiv when her colleague saw a little face poke out from behind a burned-out tank. 'It was definitely the worst time imaginable to get an animal,' admitted Vlasova, 32. Her schedule was packed with assignments. She brought her home that day and named her Javelina, after the U.S. shoulder-mounted anti-tank weapons that helped Ukraine defend Kyiv in 2022. Sometimes, Javelina's traumatic past comes out when she panics from loud noises, like explosions or thunder, that send her into hiding. Vlasova said her strategy is: 'Okay, I'm going to cuddle her.' 'Our moral values' For three years, combat medic Roman, 33, had seen all kinds of pets - dogs, cats, horses, cows, even ostriches and a turtle - abandoned across the front line. One dog his unit took care of for six months died when she stepped on a grenade. So when he was deployed to Russia's Kursk region last August and found a fluffy tricolor dog cowering in an abandoned garden, Roman, who can only be identified by his first name because he remains on active duty, feared going through the pain of losing a war dog again. But when he sent photos to his partner, Nadiia, she said his only home would be with them. Roman's deputy company commander, who had already adopted two cats, approved the dog's staying with Roman's unit until he could evacuate him to Nadiia. The troops initially named the dog Sudzhyk, for Sudzha, the Russian town Ukraine had seized during the operation. But when the dog moved in with Nadiia farther from the front, she renamed him Leo.
IOL News
26-05-2025
- IOL News
Students at Whitman Middle School learn life skills through chicken care
Whitman Middle School students care for the flock of Novogen browns, cleaning the coop, helping feed them and gathering eggs. Image: Moriah Ratner/For The Washington Post On a sunny morning in a small courtyard at Walt Whitman Middle School in Virginia, a 14-year-old with a purple buzz cut cradled a plump chicken in her arms. 'Her name is Betsy,' Maicy Nealy, an eighth-grader at the Alexandria school, said as the animal's eyes softly fluttered shut in her lap. As a young child, Nealy was afraid of chickens. Now she spends hours after school collecting their eggs and cleaning the coop for the school's five hens. And though she says she was never an outdoorsy type, she feeds them their worm meals as well. The chicken program at Whitman started about a year ago when after-school program specialist Lee Maguire - a.k.a. 'Chicken Daddy' - planned a month-long embryo development program for kids to learn about biology and anatomy. Video Player is loading. 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Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ Walt Whitman Middle School eighth-graders Jonas Figueroa, left, and Maicy Nealy hold chickens in the courtyard at the Alexandria school. Image: Moriah Ratner/For The Washington Post Maguire runs a variety of programs but has an affinity for agriculture. He studied resilient and sustainable communities in graduate school, he said. The egg incubator soon became a mainstay at the campus in spring 2024. As the eggs hatched, so did interest among Whitman students, who filed in and out of Maguire's office to see the fetuses developing and then started visiting him to pet the babies. 'They've known them since they were the little yellow, fuzzy, down, cute little morsels,' Maguire said. Whitman staff saw how much the kids enjoyed spending time with the chickens and decided to keep them around indefinitely, Maguire said. And as the seventh-graders who interacted with the babies one year ago transitioned into eighth-graders, the chicks transitioned into red-feathered, yellow-eyed adult hens. A chicken tries to escape from the arms of Whitman eighth-grader Savannah Lee Image: Moriah Ratner/For The Washington Post The kids soon got attached to the chickens and the chickens to the kids. The chickens even recognize the kids' faces and voices, Maguire added, and waddle toward the door when they spot the students arriving. Throughout the school year, staff said, they've observed students gaining not only companionship from the animals but some life skills as well. The students replenish the feed supply - which costs about $25 for 50 pounds - with proceeds from selling some of the eggs the chickens produce at $5 to $10 a dozen. Maguire noted that the programme's inception coincided with a rising market demand for cheaper eggs. 'We got super lucky that egg prices skyrocketed so it seemed like, 'Whoa, what a deal,'' Maguire said. 'It also builds their ability to understand how to make a program sustainable and lasting.' As the chickens ambled over to the coop and pecked at the air for a snack, Nealy approached the food supply and asked Maguire about the feed bucket. For the teen, the chickens provided structure after school and piqued her interest in agriculture. She's even forgiven the one that snatched her bracelet, Nealy said, stroking its back as the bird opened its tiny, narrow mouth and yawned. Now she can't imagine an adulthood without chickens involved. 'I want to at least own five. Max … maybe max … 15 max,' she said, adding that when she grows up, she plans to be 'a lawyer that owns chickens.' Savannah Lee, 14, said the chicken caretaking became a nice way to unwind and de-stress after school. She also takes pride in knowing her work is contributing to their quality of life. 'Animals can live better if other animals help take care of them,' Lee said, patting a pressure point on a chicken's neck to relax her. And the benefit goes both ways. Spending time with the chickens helps Lee manage feelings of frustration and anger that may flare up during the day, she said. The chickens' calming presence on campus is an advantage of the program that the school's social workers and counselors quickly picked up on as well, Maguire said. They sometimes escort struggling students outside to the coop to help them calm down or sort through their feelings. 'It's a moment that they don't have to think about housing insecurity, food insecurity, if their parents are going to get deployed, how they're going to have to improve their grades because they're struggling,' he said. 'The chickens don't judge, they just love them. It's a peaceful escape.' Said Jonas Figueroa, 14: 'They comfort you, instead of you comforting them.' Figueroa isn't particularly interested or strong in academics, he said. He participates in sports but isn't terribly coordinated, either. The chicken work is where he excels, he said. 'I'm doing school subjects and I'm thinking, 'I'm not really good at this.' But then it leads you to think, 'What are my talents really?' And then you come out to the chickens and you realize you can put a chicken to sleep and you're like, 'Oh, I guess I'm good at handling chickens,'' Figueroa said. As the school year comes to an end, the chickens and the students prepare to part ways. The students will go home and brace for starting high school, while the chickens will spend the summer shacked up with Maguire. But first, he has a surprise he's going to let the kids in on soon. 'I bought more baby chicks,' he said. 'I got them eight more.'
