Which Came First? The Chick or the Chicken

Dear Nana,

Did you ever have a class pet? I imagine your answer will be "no" because you taught older children than I. Well, I don't have a class pet either, but last week I took my 2nd graders over to the 1st grade classroom so they could meet the school's newly hatched chicks. My 2nd graders sat in a circle as the 1st grade teacher gently plucked the chicks one by one from the warmth of their glass-enclosed home and placed them in the center of the circle. The chicks wandered around timidly, reluctantly letting my 2nd graders lift them into their hands. As I watched from outside the circle, I remembered that I, too, was the proud mother of a baby chick in my own Kindergarten class so many years ago. The chicks, one for each of us, had began as warm eggs in an incubator. When the eggs hatched, out waddled fluffy yellow chicks, dizzy with the brightness of the world outside their egg and uneasy on their just-grown legs. They were so cute it was hard to believe that these sweet pastel puffs would one day grow up to be chickens. To us, they were cuddly, sunshiney balls of joy. We clambered to get our hands on them, looking forward each day to the time when we'd be allowed to play with them.

This time, my 2nd graders scrambled to find the seats closest to the chicks so that they could be first to hold them, just as I had done so many years before. But not me. This time, I didn't even hold one. In fact, I don't think I even pet one of the chicks. Perhaps it's because, as a grown-up, I worry about things like germs, something a child never worries about. Grown-ups don't dig their hands in the dirt and scoop out worms. We don't look under rocks to see if a caterpillar is hiding. We don't fingerpaint. But why? Why shouldn't we? Why didn't I hold a chick? Granted, the chicks, as cute as they were, were pooping all over the place. But the amazing thing is, the kids didn't care. They just wiped their hands on the newspaper that lay under the chicks placed there for just that reason, and scooped up another chick who would, in turn, do the same thing. Scoop up chick, chick poops, newspaper wipe, and so on. The cycle continued and the joy on their faces grew with each new chick they held.

I'm not even sure it's the getting dirty part that really kept me from picking up a chick. After all, hand sanitzer was at the ready. Instead, I think that, as adults, we sometimes stop doing the things that, as children, so amazed us. That little chick was, to me, just a chicken. It had lost that Easter holiday, stuffed animal sweetness that it had once held for me as a child. This chick would one day grow up to be someone's dinner. And, in that moment, I couldn't see past that. But when we got back to our own classroom, hand's sanitized, spirit's energized, I looked at my 2nd graders faces, still beaming from their chick encounter. And I thought, "to be a child again..." I wanted to race back there and hold a chick in my own two hands just as I'd done in Kindergarten. I wanted to let it poop on me and I wanted not to care that it did. I couldn't go back, of course. I couldn't leave my 2nd graders unattended. After all, we had math and reading and social studies to do. But I thought about those chicks for the rest of the day. I would go back there. I would hold a chick.

And then, it was too late. I had missed my chance. The chicks had been picked up by a farmer. They had gone back to the farm. There, they would become . . . chickens.

Even though I didn't hold a chick last week, and even though I'm mad at myself for not doing it, I'm glad to have had the chick experience. It reminded me again of why I am a teacher. Don't you remember, Nana? It is moments like this that we are allowed back into that magical world of childhood when there is so much of the world to see, so many things to learn, so few stones unturned. To hold a baby chick was, for my 2nd graders, a great highlight of a still short life. For me, it was not all that important. But it once was. Oh, was it ever. And I promise to myself that next year, poop be damned, I will hold a chick. And the small child in me, the child I once was, will thank me for it.

Love, Katie