By Barbara Vokatis
Benefits of Therapy Animals in Classrooms
These days, many children have high levels of anxiety that often prevent them from learning in school. But this challenge is only one of many children’s experiences. Many children exhibit lower skills in math, reading, and writing, with low motivation and engagement. Despite remediation efforts, many such children remain weak in these academic areas.
The inevitable question that I ask myself as an educator with many years of experience
is how we can help children in both improving their well-being and academics. While
schools have many wonderful teachers, psychologists, and counselors, we still see
children who struggle in many areas.
However, as a therapy dog partner of six years, I have witnessed something incredible
in the way children’s faces shine with joy, happiness, and readiness to learn content when they have a chance to interact with my therapy dog, even if learning is difficult for them.
Incredible changes are happening in the way children act and feel because of this
impact. To this day, I still remember when a young boy who never talked in school,
started talking because of the connection he made with my dog. This connection was
the reason for him to break the silence and start talking to his teacher and peers. He felt
safe when Carmel approached him and trusted her.
The benefits of including therapy animals in classrooms are well known. I speak about
these benefits in Amazing Power of Dog Therapy and Teachers and Therapy Dog
Teams. Therapy animals provide a less stressful, calming environment while helping
children with reading. However, as the field of Animal-Assisted Intervention develops, also
with my input, it is apparent that there are even more such benefits. By including
therapy animals in more creative yet simple ways, it is possible to achieve even
more. All that is needed is a closer collaboration between therapy dog teams and
teachers.
Innovative Animal Therapy for Enhancing Writing Skills
How can we help reluctant young writers to write more than a word or sentence with
enthusiasm? Including a therapy animal innovatively can help with that. Together with
my collaborating teacher, Lucinda, we engaged a class of reluctant writers in writing
little chapter books with the help of my dog and saw a transformation.
When I was reading my book, “From Unruly to Therapy Dog,” about how Carmel and I
became a therapy dog team to children, I asked these children to close their eyes and
visualize scenes from the text. It was amazing to hear all the children’s detailed
visualizations. Also, all children wanted to share, which was unusual for some. Since
many dog therapy teams write and publish books about their journey to therapy dog
work, many therapy dog partners can share such books with children in the classroom.
Creative Dog Therapy to Boost Math Skills
Many young children struggle with math and are disengaged from it. How can we help these children be more engaged in math? If we introduced therapy dogs to such remedial math groups in simple but fun ways, engagement could increase tremendously. I will always remember one boy who was very weak in math and needed his behavioral plan to be implemented to have his problematic behavior under control. But in the presence of my dog, his behavioral plan was not needed. In addition, this student displayed amazing creativity in coming up with ideas about including my dog in math games.
In one of the activities, the children showed Carmel several leaves. When she touched one of them with her nose to suggest which leaf the child should pick, the children got very excited because they loved the idea that their best furry friend helped them pick math facts. Carmel also sat down indicating that an answer was correct when the child matched a leaf with an appropriate circle with the answer. Children often exclaimed with excitement: “Carmel wagged her tail! This means my answer is right.”
I speak about such math activities in our recent book.
Allowing children to experience transformative interactions with therapy animals can have an amazing effect on so many areas of their functioning in school. As children’s well-being and academics are interconnected, schools should pay more attention to exploring practices, such as Animal-Assisted Intervention, to help children progress in all those spheres to truly thrive in school. Our recommendation is to connect with an organization that teaches how to start such a program. AAAIP (Association of Animal-Assisted Intervention Professionals) is a reputable organization of this kind. AAAIP provides courses, hosts mini-conferences, and informs how to establish such a practice in a way that adheres to the highest standards in the Animal-Assisted Intervention field.
