I just came across an article that I wrote back in November of 2011, when I had just returned to teaching after spending several years raising my young children and running my own business. Now that I am a dog behavior counselor and trainer, it couldn’t be more relevant. Here goes..
If there is one thing I have learned, it’s that people don’t like it when you compare their children to dogs. But here I am, doing it anyway. You see, I love dogs – and I genuinely believe they have a lot to teach us about raising and teaching children.
I should probably start by telling you that I have spent a good portion of my life at our local animal shelter as a volunteer (and working for vets and dog groomers over the summers when I was young). I have also taken many dog training classes – because like children, dogs need to learn to have good manners. The key to being successful in training your pooch is timing – immediate rewards for a task well done and instant praise for good behavior.
It turns out that those same qualities can contribute to good teaching. I had my first evaluation of the year yesterday (yes, on Halloween!) and was anxious about how the students would behave. Despite the fact that they were amped up and excited for the sugar-loaded night ahead, our lesson was very successful and they couldn’t have behaved any better. My administrator told me that the lesson was excellent and he was impressed with my timing on the little discipline issues that arose. He loved that I addressed them immediately and without being punitive. What he doesn’t know is that I learned those skills by training dogs.
Flash forward to the present day…
With 8 years of teaching high school and another 8 running a cooking school for children under my belt, my career as an educator has taken a turn. My current students are canines and their human families. My passion for dogs has come full circle and I am back where I started. But this time around, not only am I an avid student of dog behavior, I’m also a teacher. Always a teacher.
