26-05-2025
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.'
