Harbins Elementary School welcomes Lulu the Baby Goat

     Harbins Elementary School recently welcomed an unusual student this semester. Lulu, a baby goat, joined the Harbins community in February after she was rejected by her mother.

     Amanda Powell, a veteran teacher at Harbins Elementary with more than 20 years of experience, owns a farm not far from the school, where she cares for a variety of animals. When Powell discovered that Lulu had been rejected, she realized that she would have to care for Lulu herself. At just 5 days old, Lulu became part of the Harbins Elementary family.

     Powell says that Lulu is not only a source of joy or “therapy” for the school community but also a resource for Harbins’ Agriculture Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) program.

     “She [Lulu] actually ties into a lot of the different units that I’m teaching, so my Kindergarteners have been learning about living things and non-living things and what living things need,” Powell shares. “So we use Lulu and talk about what Lulu needs, and why she’s here, because she's not getting something she needs as a living thing. So we talk about her being rejected, and why, and we discuss instincts vs. learned behaviors that other baby goats might not have.”

     Lulu has also been helpful to students with special needs and has even helped reduce unwanted behaviors. Most recently, she has been a source of comfort for a group of students in Speech-Language Pathologist Maggie Sears’ classroom.

     “We started a stuttering group here at Harbins, and it's an opportunity for them to share some of the challenges they face when it comes to stuttering, and it can be really difficult,” Sears shares. “But one day I had Lulu in here, and she just really helped them open up, sitting in their laps. For some of them, that was their first time opening up about it. She provided a lot of comfort to them in a hard situation to communicate.”

     Lulu walks around the school, jumping alongside Powell each and every day, and students greet Lulu to make her feel welcome as the school’s only indoor farm animal. Harbins Elementary also has chickens, and they have been approved to house goats next school year.

     “It’s just amazing… the social emotional impact that a goat has brought to our school and what Amanda has brought to the school, I couldn’t thank her more for sharing Lulu with us,” says Special Needs Teacher Anita Button.

     Lulu’s tenure at Harbins will have to end once she reaches a certain age, so she can return to her herd and be reintegrated into farm life. However, Powell intends to bring a couple of goats from her farm to the school to join the program next school year.

“She’s a really precious goat, and she’s really fluffy,” says  4th-grader Loretta Rose.

Discover more about Harbins Elementary on its website and watch Lulu in action on our social media.