First and second days back....

First day back. Feb 7, 2011
Today was a BUSY day!!! I thought I was ready to get back but of course all morning long I kept thinking of things that I still needed to do! It all came together right on time though.
The class is HUGE! Sixteen girls all together. One, who has been there for probably a year, is going home this Thursday and another girl will be going home in two weeks. So that leaves us with 14 girls to work with! We will have six dogs so I'm thinking we will pair the girls up two to one dog and have two of the girls mentor the new girls.
Mentors do not work with their own dog. They help with all the kids and dogs, just as one of our volunteers would do. I'm really excited about one of the girls mentoring. "KT" is very shy and very easily influenced by the other girls. I'm hoping that putting her in a mentor position will force her out of her shell and help her take charge and lead the way for other girls for once. I have high hopes for her. "KT".....remember those initials! I have a feeling she will be in this blog quite often!
We just had classroom work today, stress reduction and management. The kids are taught how to read the dogs' body language, understand their stress and how to react to it all. It's pretty easy really, just put yourself in the dogs paws.

Day 2, Feb. 8, 2011
The girls walked in the gym and did exactly what they were supposed to do...no rushing up to the dogs, get down to the dogs level, no petting on the top of the head, relax, be happy, and no direct eye contact with the dogs. The dogs quickly adjusted and were comfortable, and so were the girls. Unfortunately, we will be unable to keep all the girls in the class. Sixteen is just too many. Although it went well today, I realized it is so much easier to connect with the girls and talk with them when it is just one kid and one dog. Sometimes, it can be beneficial to have two kids to one dogk, for example, when it is a painfully shy kid and I can pair them with an out going kid. We really have to pay attention to someone like "KT" though, who is so easily influenced by others. We have never been able to pair her with anyone. She needs to come out of her shell, yet we don't want her learning bad habits from others. KT has trained two dogs, has gone home, and came back again. This time we'll try her out in a mentoring role. She was already taking it seriously today. She stepped up and was helping others, even cleaning up after the dogs without being asked to.
So now the difficult part was to begin, who stays, who goes? Then a staff supervisor, for the JJC, walks in and tells me, who stays, who goes. You'd think "oh great, I didn't have to make that decision now". No, not the case. It seems to me that the decision has been made based on punishment. Kids that are being punished are not allowed in the class, and kids who are behaving, can stay. That is not the way it is supposed to work and, unfortunately, Teacher's Pet runs into this problem quite often. The kids love our program, so staff in most of the facilities that we work in, have decided to use us as a punishment or perk. Fact is, the kids that are getting in the most trouble, having the most problems, they NEED to be in our program. They need the most help. Teacher's Pet wasn't created for fun, it is designed to help these kids, to give them confidence in themselves, to prove to them that they are worth something, they can do good things, they can be loved, it helps them feel good about themselves. Uggggggg, people just don't get this! They think, "this is fun so they don't deserve this, they're are being punished". So now this needs to be addressed and it is never a good to start off the program with a disagreement. I really have to think about how to approach this!

Tomorrow I will post pics of the dogs!