Eggs are the obvious benefit of a chicken coop. There are also a lot of intangible things that Crystal, a blind student with Seaman High School’s Viking Warrior program, gets from the coop. It brings her a way to get to know her classmates. And it helps prepare her for a world after high school.
Seaman High School’s Viking Warrior program is made up of students, like Crystal, who need a specialized learning environment. Raquel Carlson, the special education teacher who heads up the Viking Warrior program, has a goal of making her students feel like they’re contributing to the community during high school and beyond. Unfortunately, the nature of their classes means that they don’t have as many opportunities to interact with other school students. Then Megan VanGordon, the school’s FFA Instructor, invited Raquel to get her class involved with the chicken coop that her FFA students were building.
Raquel loved the invitation. She saw it as an opportunity to get Crystal and the other Viking Warrior students more involved with their classmates. That idea was confirmed after the coop was completed and she got see her Viking Warrior students interact with their FFA peers and with the chickens. She says that Crystal and the other Viking Warriors were nervous at first, but they learned quickly from the FFA students. Crystal and the rest of Raquel’s class were opening up, and they were interacting with the birds and their fellow students. When asked about Crystal, one of the FFA members, Emily, says “Seeing how much she enjoyed it, I realized that it was all worth it.”
Learn more about the FFA coop at Seaman High School
