What If Schools Hired Dogs As Therapists? (brightreads.com)

A school in San Diego uses a “facility dog” to offer children a kind of healing that humans sometimes cannot provide.

It used to take Mary Skrabucha five minutes to walk across the campus of The O’Farrell Charter School in San Diego. Now it takes her twenty, because with Sejera — a golden retriever — by her side, kids and teachers are constantly stopping to say hello.

Sejera isn’t your average friendly retriever. She’s a trained “facility dog” who works with Skrabucha in Family Support Services, The O’Farrell School’s one-stop shop for everything from counseling to applying for food stamps to buying towels donated from Bed Bath & Beyond. In a school that serves students whose families struggle in a variety of ways — poverty, neighborhood gangs, foster care, incarcerated parents — Sejera has become vital to many students’ emotional and psychological well-being.

This is no small job. Researchers over the last decade have amassed a sobering body of evidence showing the inability of stressed students to learn.  If a kid is living in an abusive home, for example, or a violent neighborhood, his mind is physically incapable of absorbing lessons when he steps into the classroom. That’s before counting factors like hunger, physical impairment, or diagnosed learning disabilities.

Skrabucha had a dog in school before, a terrier that was popular with the kids. But Sejera is the first facility dog, meaning a canine that is trained, but not to the level of a therapy or service dog. Skrabucha had to meet with Sejera’s original handler twice a week for four months to transition the retriever, and Sejera herself went through two years of training with Paws’itive Teams, an organization that trains dogs for a variety of services, from helping veterans suffering from PTSD to accompanying children who have to testify in court, against an abuser for example. The dog may be able to provide comfort in a frightening and traumatic situation.

At the O'Farrell School, Skrabucha gives a speech at the beginning of each year focused on a whole-child approach to teaching. "You're taught how to teach," she tells the teachers. "But you have to remember that kids are coming in with a suitcase full of baggage. You have a curriculum you need to get through, buy Johnny may have witnessed his dad beating his mom the night before, or he may have had not breakfast. You have to recognize when Johnny just can't learn today, and send him down to my office so we can work with him."

To read more of Antonia Malchik's article, please click here.