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The circle of life lives within local school campuses. From planting seeds, hatching chicks and slaughtering roosters, campuses such as Ormondale Elementary School in Portola Valley and Sacred Heart Schools in Atherton are teaching students the entire life cycle from start to end.
Ormondale’s chicken coop and garden
Nearly 10 years ago, a former Ormondale Elementary School teacher introduced the idea of chickens on campus to incorporate them into lessons for her kindergarten class. Now, the program has expanded to transitional kindergarten and second-grade classrooms.
Each week, the three classes take turns taking care of the coop alongside a parent volunteer. Students learn how to clean the coop, provide food and water, and collect the eggs.
They incorporate math skills when counting the number of eggs produced and collecting chicken poop to add to the worm compost bin.
Every so often the school will get fertilized eggs and students get the opportunity to learn about the chicken’s life cycle, incubation and maturation.
The Ormondale coop currently has eight chickens, some of which were hatched in the classroom. One of its original chickens, Rosemary, recently died at the age of 10.
Farm animals on campus are also helping children develop skills in social emotional learning. Students are learning about responsibility, cooperation and kindness, said Kristin Bouman, second grade teacher at Ormondale.
Students at Ormondale Elementary in Portola Valley gently pet one of the school’s chickens on March 18, 2025. Photo by Anna Hoch-Kenney. 
Kenzie, right, counts the eggs collected from the chickens at Ormondale Elementary in Portola Valley on March 18, 2025. Photo by Anna Hoch-Kenney. 
Fernando, a student at Ormondale Elementary in Portola Valley, feeds fresh greens to one of the school’s chickens on March 18, 2025. Photo by Anna Hoch-Kenney.
Recently, students noticed that one of the chickens, Dixie, looked like she wasn’t feeling well. Kindergarten teacher Silvia Martinez said that when she explained to them what was happening and how they were treating her, she could tell that her students were full of love and empathy.
Bauman said she overheard one of her second-graders whisper, “Come on Dixie. I love you,” as she watched the sick chicken recover.
Lessons using the chickens are also incorporated into the second-grade curriculum about sustainability and gardening. The class learns about how the animals can provide compost for the garden which then supports the growth of food. Martinez and Bouman are hoping to start a cooking project where students learn how to make healthy meals using the eggs and produce from the garden.
Sacred Heart’s Farm and Garden Program
Over the course of 18 years, Sacred Heart’s farm has grown from a few chickens to now dozens of goats, rabbits and ducks. The Farm and Garden Program started as a club in 2005 by farm and garden teacher Stewart Slafter.
Slafter, who formerly taught history, slowly grew the program into a course for preschool through high school students to learn more about sustainability. Now, he serves as a full time outdoor education teacher, teaching his classrooms under the sun.
As at Ormondale, younger students in preschool learn about newly hatched chicks and the difference between a store bought egg and a freshly laid egg. They also learn about the life cycle of plants by planting acorns that sprout into oak tree saplings.
As the curriculum extends into middle school and high school, students begin to learn about gardening and harvesting different plants throughout the seasons. Sacred Heart’s garden has grown arugula, chard, tomatoes, chilis, eggplants, cucumbers and more. The garden thrives with fertilizer from the composted animal manure.
“I would often explain to the students by saying ‘we feed the animals and they feed us,’” said Slafter.
High school students are also taught about the butchering of animals for meat through a strictly choreographed demonstration. Slafter said the lesson always starts with a prayer followed by a quick slaughtering of the animal. During the dissection of a rooster, students can volunteer to help remove the breasts and thighs.
Days later, the slaughtered chicken is cooked and used in tacos for the class to enjoy.
“You would sit and eat tacos together and talk about the experience of what surprised them, what horrified them and what they found important about the event as an educational and psychological moment,” said Slafter.
He emphasized that in a society focused on social media and technology, students are lacking hands-on experience with the real world.
“For a lot of kids who are students here, their greatest familiarity with animals is TikTok videos of cats acting cute,” said Slafter. “They’re not even in a position to explain why humans eat what they eat.”
Through this program, they’re able to interact with different species of animals, observe their natural behavior and gain a better understanding of the world around them, he added.
Farm to community
By having chickens that produce eggs, goats that provide milk and a garden that grows fresh vegetables, local schools are able to share what they’ve produced with the wider community.
In May, Ormondale School hosts an annual farmers market where students have previously sold chicks that were raised in the classroom and eggs collected from the coop. In prior years, this money was used to buy chicken feed but now supplies are bought with the help of the district and Parent Teacher Organization.
With so many eggs produced each day, parent volunteers are given the eggs as a “thank you” for helping the program.
Sacred Heart’s produce is also sold to the community during its campus farmers market and is sold to multiple families through an online community supported agriculture program.
“I like to think of the farm and garden as partially a community organization but also a commercial one,” said Slafter.
Every Thursday morning, the school will fill up several crates with food that was produced from the farm and garden and deliver it to families that have paid for a year’s worth of fresh food. “We just guarantee that this food will be delivered to you on the very same day it was picked, ” he added.
The produce is also delivered to the school’s cafeteria, which in return will collect vegetable scraps that students can feed them to the rabbits and chickens. Half of what the animals eat is the campus itself, Slafter said. This includes grass clippings, oak leaves and the pasture that the goats roam.
Impact of the bird flu
As cases of the bird flu increased across the state, there has been a growing concern about the health of backyard chickens and other animals. In February, there were two cases of bird flu detected in a poultry flock and a stray cat in San Mateo County.
Ormondale School officials, however, said their coop is so secure that the risk of their chickens getting infected by outside birds was never a concern. They also have a regular system for children entering the coop to change into boots and to wash their hands before and after going in.
Sacred Heart’s farm has been closed off for a few months after county public health officials advised the school to restrict access to the farm until more was known about the avian flu.
With the farm being in an open space visited by crows, blue jays and other wild birds, Slafter said that the school was concerned for the health of the kids.
“It’s possible we wouldn’t know that we had a chicken infected and if it is a transmissible disease from chickens to humans, we just don’t want to run the risk of that happening with other people’s children,” he added.
The farm closure meant that lessons were restricted to the garden these past couple of months.
Although he appreciates the school’s precautions, Slafter said he has not seen any signs of sick chickens nor has he felt any of the symptoms of the bird flu. He is hoping for the farm to reopen in the coming weeks so students can continue to learn alongside the goats, chickens and rabbits.
