Kimberly J. Workinger
I teach at The Sound School Regional Vocational Aquaculture Center in New Haven. The students enrolled at the Sound School are from both the city of New Haven as well as eighteen participating districts in the south central Connecticut area. The student population is diverse including white, African American, Latino, and racially mixed students. The cultural diversity is further enhanced by a wide spectrum of economic means. This is a traditional school in the sense that the core courses are taught on the same campus. The English and history elective courses often have a nautical component. While the name of the school does not indicate as such, there are two vocational learning directions for the students. Students from the city of New Haven can study aquaculture or agriculture.
The agriculture students learn a wide range of vocational skills including the use of power tools, tractor driving, landscaping techniques and in the case of the small animal curriculum, handling and caring for small animals. For safety reasons, the class sizes are controlled by the vocational system and are comparatively small with a maximum of 15 students per class. The small animal curriculum includes handling of animals including general care, feeding, and breeding of primarily small animals such as hamsters, gerbils, rabbits and chinchilla. As the school expands facilities, the hope is that there will be cats and small dogs at the center. Until that time, the animal science course utilizes local veterinarians and shelters to access these animals.
The course that this unit is designed for is an animal science/veterinary tech course taken in the junior year of the agriculture track at the school. Having studied natural resources and general biology in the freshman and sophomore years, the students have chosen this course to focus their studies in the direction of animal care. While companion animal care does not fall under the normal scope of production agriculture, it is a potential course of study at The Sound School. As potential employees of the huge animal care industry, the broad objectives of the small animal curriculum are understanding of and appreciation and respect for companion animals. In order to become effective participants in the animal care industry, it is important that the students in this class have a reasonable understanding of animal behaviors, the physiological basis of these behaviors and be able to differentiate between a behavior and an instinct. In many cases, an understanding of this information could determine the safety of the animal, the employee and the public that comes in contact with the animal. As an effective employee of the animal care industry, students may also be required to explain behaviors of dogs and cats for the benefit of the clients. Should the student graduate from the Sound School and work in a veterinary office, for example, the client would be better served if he or she had some understanding of animal behavior and could effectively communicate this to the owner. Understanding animal behavior in the context of working with the animal in any one of the occupations that make up the animal care industry is the overall goal of this unit.
My teaching style is generally one of conversation/ discussion where I encourage the students to think about the world around them and how they impact that world. The animal care industry requires people who are observant, committed to the welfare of animals and willing to take on responsibility with attention to details. The student activities provided in this unit will require the students to us observation skills and comment on what they observe both in a written and oral form. Throughout the course, students are asked to understand the information and immediately apply it to the extent that it is possible with out, for now anyway, having animals in the room.