Tuesday was a red-letter day for John Champe’s section of Positive Experiences in Education Relationships (PEER), a class that aims to promote positivity at our school through student mentoring, as well as larger whole-school functions. This month, for example, we’ll be putting on several different events centered around Unity Day, a national day of anti-bullying and pro-inclusion, which we commemorate (thanks to the help of Sources of Strength) with unity chains and a fall tailgate during all lunches with pumpkin painting, cider, and cornhole.  

Since taking over as faculty sponsor last fall, I’ve learned a lot about the variables that go into making a whole-school activity successful. By “successful”, I mean an event or initiative that positively affects a large (10% of the student body or greater) and diverse segment of the student population. To achieve this, you have to balance time-management, planning, budget (anything that involves the whole school usually has a cost somewhere), and buy-in from the PEER students themselves. Some initiatives strike a better balance than others with these factors.  

It seems pretty obvious in retrospect, but hosting a meet-and-greet with therapy dogs was a gigantic success, the type of success that made me wonder why I hadn’t thought of it sooner. 

First of all, it wasn’t my idea. The idea came from interviewing students in the spring who wanted to join PEER. I asked students in their application to suggest ideas for activities that would promote positivity at Champe. One application contained a suggestion to bring therapy animals each month for students with anxiety. I liked the idea, but I had no idea how difficult it would be to see through, or how interested students would be. This month I decided to find out. 

I called Heeling House, a Sterling-based non profit. They were immediately receptive to arranging a meet-and-greet with a team of therapy dogs. We corresponded by email a few more times to lock down a date.   

The PEER students did their part to promote the event, creating a digital poster with Canva and advertising it on the requisite social media platforms. We soon realized that promotion wasn’t going to be a huge issue: my PEER students reported a high level of interest in the event. 

This proved true as soon as the dogs arrived on Tuesday. As their owners registered in the office, wide-eyed students rushed through the doors muttering barely intelligible exclamations of delight: “ohhhh wooow can I pet him?…Why are there dogs here?…Heey what’s your name?”

Finally we retreated to our designated space outside the cafeteria. The PEER students helped with crowd control, inviting different segments of the cafeteria at different times to come outside and visit the pups. During the first lunch block I stood with Ramy, a PEER junior, admiring the mix of students enjoying the therapy pups. The dogs themselves were often barely visible, surrounded by a mass of admirers. “This is pretty successful,” Ramy observed. 

It was indeed, and in the wake of its success I took away a few lessons. The first was to never underestimate teenagers’ fascination with cute animals. I think animals in general are always a popular novelty, even if they aren’t necessarily cute, or even invited. (I remember my tenth grade history class being distubed by a squirrel that poked his head out of a hole in the drop ceiling. The student who saw the rodent screamed and pointed. We were all familiar with this animal. We saw them every day. Yet we accomplished nothing else in class that day.) I have an ornery Betta fish in my classroom that always draws a few concerned students checking on him every day.

The second lesson was that an event does not have to be elaborately organized or funded to be successful in raising morale at a school. Thanks to the generous volunteer efforts of our therapy dogs’ trainers, John Champe was a more positive environment on Tuesday. All it took was a student’s idea, a few phone calls, and a team of relaxed pups.