The Spirit of Education

Since the A.F.A. was first organized, I have felt an extreme need for the education of young people regarding the bird world. Last summer, during my sister's visit here, an excellent plan developed to put an educational program into effect. She suggested that it might be fun to set up her classroom with a breeding pair of finches. She also agreed to record her reactions so that we could anticipate what would occur in other classroom situations where the teacher was a true novice regarding birds. Plans were made and I finally arrived at my sister's classroom with the cage, birds, seed, and supplies. I was surprised at the amount of thought and preparation she had put into the project. She decided that with six year old students a full day on birds should take place. By the end of the day the students would be saturated with the subject. During the subsequent weeks of the school year just one period a day would be devoted to the birds. To arouse the student's interest, Claire, my sister, had told her class that there was a "surprise" day corning. She gave no hint of what the surprise would be. Long before the school day started we set up the large cage and the two pairs of Zebra Finches. When the children arrived they found the classroom door locked so no one could peek in. The bird cage was covered so that the more clever students could not discover the surprise through the classroom windows. When the door opened and the twentyone smiling faces came into the room, all of our efforts were paid for in full by the multitudinous smiles, Oos and Aahs, and "look at that". Once the students settled down, the five guests - four birds and myself - were introduced - and we held a question and answer period. After this, the students were told that the whole day would be a fun day with the birds but that there would be some work included. The religious portion of the class (Claire teaches in a parochial school) involved reading from a book titled New Friends which dealt with things to be thankful for, e.g., the little creatures such as birds. Following this, their prayers and intentions dealt a great deal with the birds and in one student's own words, "hope for fertility". Math was the next point of interest. The class was divided into three groups - each with a different type of math related exercise. My group worked on a maze - a picture of a canary in a cage with only one trap door (see sketch). The maze was difficult for some but when it was solved the students were allowed to color the canary they had helped escape. They were then asked to name and to spell the name they wanted to give this bird. All of this was in preparation for finding names for the four finches. The childrens efforts at coloring gave us green and pink parrots, black and green owls, purple and blue canaries, and other marvelous combinations. Reading was next on the agenda and we had on hand dozens of books that dealt with birds. With the help of teaching assistants the class was broken into four reading groups - each of which was read to out of the bird books. My group spent the time looking through preselected Zoonooz magazines, especially the love-bird issue since lovebirds happen to be my main interest. Every fifteen minutes the groups rotated so that each group was exposed to all four sections. In my section a great many things were discussed...