Commentary: What a schoolyard rooster taught me about my social media-numbed students

From August to November, I taught high school English alongside a few roosters who lived in a coop in the courtyard outside my first-floor classroom. Hatched in an incubator in the science department in the spring of 2022, the roosters became, during these few months, the most vocal sentient beings at my school.

I became fascinated with them but not necessarily because they are roosters. Rather, I became increasingly drawn to their circadian rhythms — their internal clock that helps them self-regulate — because I’m watching my students lose theirs.

When students are on social media apps, their eyes glaze over like kids who’ve