Puppies and IB

Yesterday was a beautiful day on campus.  It was cool – mid 50s but sunny – but the midday forecast called for pure awesome.  The reason? Puppies on the Quad!  Our friends at the Forsyth Humane Society brought some puppies and small dogs to campus so that students would have the opportunity to play with them, walk them, and engage in a little canine therapy during mid-terms week.  (Special thanks to my colleague in the Learning Assistance Center, Kimber Clark, as well as Student Government for organizing this.)

I arrived right about 11 am when the event started, and there were about 6-8 puppies there.  My guess on breeds was that we had some beagles or beagle mixes, a basset hound, a couple of terriers, and later we had a larger dog (but still looked more in the toy range, not a big dog).  The puppies were around 8 weeks old, and they at first were a little cold, a little sleepy, a little overwhelmed.  But as the students (and some adults) started to arrive, the puppies bumbled over to see everyone, basking in getting petted and kissed and oohed and aahed over by everyone.

Some of the students walked the dogs around the Mag (Manchester) Quad, others cradled the sleepy ones like babies, others rubbed bellies and scratched ears and seemed to be loving life.

A couple of the students were talking about how much they missed their own pets.  If you think about it, your kids can always call/text/email their parents or friends or siblings and connect to them, but there is no way to get that from the family dog.  And college can be a sadly dog-lacking place, unless you have professors like Dr. Allan Louden of Communications who brings his beautiful golden retriever to campus.

So in addition to being a stress reliever, these puppies allowed some students to get their fill of dogs for a few minutes.  I watched all the faces of the students with the dogs and on the low end of the scale it looked like contentment and on the high end of the scale it looked like pure, unadulterated bliss.  Maybe we need to consider a Take Your Dog to Work Day – for the students’ benefit, of course ; )  And if your students missed the puppies today, they are scheduled to come back on May 1st before finals!

So that was yesterday’s big event (at least for me).  A few more puppy pictures at the end of this post.

In today’s news, we have an event in Wait Chapel tonight at 7:00 p.m.  For students who participated in the International Baccalaureate program, are Education majors and minors, or are just interested parties, a great speaker coming to campus.

Jay Mathews, The Washington Post education columnist, is coming to Wait Chapel at 7 pm tonight to address the question “Is International Baccalaureate the Answer to Education’s Problems?”

Jay Mathews is the author of multiple books including “Supertest: How the International Baccalaureate Can Strengthen Our Schools,” “Escalante: The Best Teacher in America,” and “Work Hard Be Nice.” He is an education columnist for The Washington Post and the author of “The Post blog Class Struggle.” Mathews compiles the rankings of the nation’s top high schools for Newsweek each year.

While writing “Supertest: How International Baccalaureate Can Strengthen Our Schools,” Mathews became intimately knowledgeable about the IB Diploma Programme. He went so far as to sit for the examinations. He promises to deliver a thought-provoking address, and we hope to see your students there!

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More puppy pics!