Furry friends foster education reform in District school

A student interacts with Toby during a PAL Club session at Stanton Elementary in Southeast DC: Photo courtesy of People Animals Love

Students at Stanton Elementary in Southeast Washington, D.C., are building their reading, math, and other educational skills with the help of man's best friend—dogs.

People Animals Love, (PAL) a nonprofit organization that harnesses the human-canine bond to create societal change, is bringing a new approach to education reform at Stanton Elementary through a program that allows children to study with volunteered pets.

"Using animals as a way to create education reform is really interesting, and it's kind of cutting edge with these reading programs," said Fran McCrae, developement and communications officer of People Animals Love. "There's a lot of programs beginning to pop up over the country because of how dogs can help kids improve reading, literacy and math skills." In other major cities like New York, Salt Lake City and Chicago, similar programs are already being utilized in libraries and schools.

Last year, researchers at The University of California at Davis studied the changes in reading skills among children who read to dogs. Children became better readers when they read aloud to animals.

The study found that reading fluency improved by 12 percent among public school third graders and 30 percent among home-schooled students who read aloud to dogs regularly. Likewise, 75 percent of the parents reported that children read aloud more after participating in the study.

People Animals Love first tested the after-school reading program, known as  PAL Club, at Beacon House, a nonprofit tutoring and mentoring organization located in Northeast D.C. The organization then took the program to Stanton Elementary, the lowest-performing school in the District, for students in kindergarten through fifth grade.

"Stanton Elementary has failed to meet education standards for seven years," McCrae said. The school is going through its third restructuring and its fourth principal in eight years, she said. Scholar Academies, a nonprofit school management organization that works to close achievement gaps in education, recently replaced Stanton's school administration to better serve the educational needs of the children.

The PAL Club program is a year-round, long-term commitment to help build an academic foundation for the children at Stanton. The program now serves 150 students from 3:30 until 6:30 p.m. every day. PAL volunteers tutor students with dogs not only to strengthen the children's academic skills, but also to help with students' emotional and behavioral needs. 

Many of the children in the program have extreme behavioral problems such as aggression, cursing, hitting or general defiance, McCrae said. Students learn to control their emotions through empathy and compassion with the animals. Students learn that they "need to be quiet and gentle in order to play with the dog," she said.

As for increasing knowledge and improving educational skills, reading to a dog provides a child with an opportunity to make mistakes and be less intimidated by the adults who help tutor them.

"They get to read to a dog, and it gives them confidence," McCrae said. "The idea is that dogs are silent, and they don't judge if you make a mistake. By reading to a dog, the kids don't feel pressure."

A PAL Club tutor and Pup-a-Roo listen to a student read in Chevy Chase, Md.: Photo courtesy of People Animals Love

During the tutoring session, a PAL volunteer will sit with a child and use flashcards or other forms of work to help strengthen a particular skill of the child they're he or she is helping. A dog then sits next to the child in an attempt to boost the student's confidence, while that student practices his or her schoolwork.

McCrae already sees changes in many of the pupils, and reminisces about one young girl in particular.

At the beginning of the year, the hardest thing was to get one girl to sit down and do her homework, McCrae said. "She didn't recognize letters; she had a hard time writing, and it was really impossible to get her to complete her homework."

Nearly six months later, the girl began to reap the benefits of the after school tutoring sessions with a dog present. "Today, she sits down the second she gets in," McCrae said. "She opens her folder, and does her homework because of the individual tutoring where a dog comes in, and she can practice her letters with him. Granted it took time, but now she does her homework every single day, and she doesn't complain. She's happy to do it."

The growth in students' learning has already been noted. "We see a huge difference already with the kids," she said.

People Animals Love is working towards making deeper changes than just strengthening educational needs. The organization is also carrying out its mission by using the human-animal bond to teach the children of Stanton Elementary about life's everyday lessons.

"We try to teach them about the general perceptions of eduation and respect for others," McCrae said. "We try to teach them that this is important, and this is how we get through life. We respect education, and put value on that. We respect one another."