chickens

hi friends.

i had decided against starting one of these “my life as a teacher”* blogs because i figured it would be hard for me to keep up with and my stories wouldn’t be interesting to actual people. all that is probably still true. anyway, here’s a story about a chicken.

quick run down of how my school/ job works: i work at a charter middle school where every student has a personal tutor, meaning every tutor has 4-6 personal tutees. when i signed on to be a tutor, i thought it meant my job was to help some kids with math and english. a more apt job description is: be entirely responsible for the educational, emotional, and psychological well-being of four young teenagers. 

this brings us to oscar.** oscar is a sixth grader, and he is awesome. this is an actual transcript of a text message oscar sent me when he first got a cell phone: “Dear Ms.A, sorry i cannot call you because i dont have any questions or inferences so i made you this text message. Thank you for reading this if you are.” i could give some context, but it would not elucidate anything. oscar no longer has a cellphone because he lost it on the bus the first week he had it, and then he got it back, and then it rang during school twice in the same day and he got detention. that’s the kind of kids oscar is. he perpetually shows up to tutorial without sharpened pencils, except one time when he brought four pencil sharpeners, and the next day i was like, “oscar, where are any of your pencil sharpeners?” and he was like “i dunno!” i really love oscar.

one day, oscar came into homeroom crying. sixth grade boys cry more than you’d expect, but this was still concerning. so i asked him what was wrong. “Ms. A, my pet chicken died,” he said in the most somber tone i have ever heard a 12-year-old produce.

how do you console a child over the loss of a pet chicken? i didn’t even know oscar had pet chickens. does he live on a farm? how could i have not known that? i felt like a terrible tutor. i had no idea what to say.

oscar proceeded to cry through breakfast. when he came to tutorial two hours later, he was carrying his own box of tissues. i asked him if he wanted to tell his tutorial partner why he was upset. “can’t you do it?” he asked. so i said, “ok, oscar is very sad because his… pet… died.” tutorial partner could tell something was up. “what was his pet?” he asked. “a chicken,” i said. “oscar is upset because his pet chicken died.” “what kind of pet is a chicken?” tutorial partner said with a smirk. i told him to be respectful, but also, good question.

cut to afternoon study hall, 6 hours later. oscar is still crying. it is so sad. that kid really really loved his chicken. i imagine him growing up with this chicken as his closest companion. baby pictures of a little oscar in a diaper holding a baby chick, young oscar learning to ride a bike with a fledgling chicken perched on the handlebars, etc. etc. 

oscar leaves school literally still crying. that evening i call his mom to check in. oscar’s mom and i don't understand half of what each other says, but she is always super sweet and receptive. “i’m just calling to let you know that oscar was very upset all day over the death of his… chicken,” i tell her. she is not surprised. i admit to her that i didn’t even know they had a chicken. oscar’s mom tells me that they visited a farm two days ago and oscar saw these “two little chickens” and just had to have them, and whatever his mom was thinking, they brought home “two little chickens” and then that morning, when oscar woke up and ran to check on his little chickens, one had fallen off the table (??) and died. (when i log this call in our database, i title it “Chicken Check-in.”)

definition of “two little chickens” is still unclear. i interpreted this as meaning chicks, but according to oscar, they were full-grown chickens, somehow living on a table in his house. regardless, he had owned this little chicken for about 48 hours before it died. he cried over it for at least 9.

the verdict is still out on whether oscar appreciated the irony of the school lunch entree that day. chicken nuggets are usually a favorite.

* right so i’m not actually a teacher, i’m a tutor/ TA, but who’s counting.

**not his real name, but i feel like it could be.