I work as a humane educator, going into about 15-20 classrooms each month to talk about some aspect of the human-animal relationship. Sometimes this frankly sucks, such as today, when I talked to a class of surly 15-year-old brutes about animal abuse and had to deal with their leering at photos of horribly maimed dogs. Makes me drink.
But a couple of weeks ago I visited four third-grade classes, talked to them about the shelter, and played “54 dogs” with them, a simulation game in which the students use pictures of 54 dogs from the shelter to see how quickly unaltered animals can increase in population. I always ask teachers to send an evaluation form, and today I received my evaluations.
And one class sent along letters. They are adorable!
Yay! I no longer have to drink! These letters just made my day (especially Kitty Girl Shivery Muffin, the best cat name ever), so I figured I would share :).
I had a very bad, long, Monday, Daniel. Eating cold leftovers in front of the computer, hoping that something would make me laugh or smile. Your thread did better- made me feel warm and happy. Even happier that you are spreading the idea of kindness to little ones.
And I agree, Kitty Girl Shivery Muffin is the best cat name ever.
Sorry about the semicreepy title–that didn’t occur to me. Yeah, the Dear Mr. Dorkness letter may have started off mean, but you should’ve seen the one that began, “Hey, schmucko!”
My veterinarian gave a presentation to a first-grade class. He took in a couple of animals and talked about the animals and how to care for them. Afterwards the kids each drew a picture and had the teacher write a caption under it. Most of the kids had captions like “Dr. Roper is a nice man” or “Kittens are cute”. One kid drew a picture that was probably intended to show Dr. Roper holding a cat. The caption was: “Without him all animals would die.”
When mr.stretch was still working as a Support Enforcement Officer collecting child support (don’t hate us!), he got to do outreach to high school health classes and the teachers would assign the kids to write letters.
Some of them made you cry for the world–15 year old kids who can’t write worth a damn. But some of them were very funny and it was the best part of the job.
My favorites would be from the guys in the class saying things like “I didn’t know you could take my money even if I was in jail! I’ll never get a girl pregnant.” Or, “Thanks for coming in and explaining about child support. If I ever get a letter from your office, I will answer it so I won’t be a dad.”
