As affirming as it always is to see rescue animals get adopted into a loving home, the sheer number of animals in need tends to make it difficult to find enough of these homes to go around.
For that reason, some folks have decided to get creative and either find new ways to get people comfortable with the idea of adopting a new friend or to make rescue animals more suitable for adoption.
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After all, we can find that under the right circumstances , those who may never have considered adopting a pet will suddenly fall in love once they see the right one.
And one heartwarming story seems to suggest that you’ve have to be made of stone to resist the charming way a second-grade class made that happen for their neighbors.
Recently, a teacher named Kensey Jones at St. Michael’s Episcopal School in Richmond, Virginia came up with a brilliant idea to give her students’ writing assignments a real-world connection.
As she told Good Morning America, she also volunteers at the Richmond Animal Care and Control shelter on weekends. This gave her the idea to have her students write persuasive letters from the perspective of the shelter’s animals.
Not only would that help them hone their writing skills, but she figured it might even get some critters adopted.
The shelter loved the idea and so did the kids once they met this 10-week-old American pit bull-terrier named Snow.
After the RACC’s mission and the struggle of getting “less desirable” animals adopted was explained to them, they jumped at the chance to to put their creativity to work.
As Jones put it, “They actually wrote these paragraphs very quickly because of the excitement.”
And we can see here that they got to work making adorable drawings of the animals and accompanying them with first-person descriptions of how cute and friendly they are.
As RACC director Christie Chipps Peters said, “Children write the best anyway because they have no filter and they’re honest and kind and it just comes from such a sweet spot. They haven’t yet been jaded.”
But while Peters appreciated the idea and the kids’ efforts, she never would have expected the success they ended up having with the community.
Of the 24 dogs and one cat that the children wrote for, 21 have since been adopted, leaving only four dogs that apparently didn’t make the cut.
In Peters’ words, “Many of the dogs were adopted, I think eight or nine went home within that first weekend.”
And considering that it’s not unusual for RACC to take in 3,000 animals each year, it’s no surprise that both they and Jones are excited to try this again next year.
Jones said the students were able to see the animals get adopted through Facebook Live videos, allowing them to see what a difference their voices can make in the community.
And Jones said this exercise made them all the more passionate about writing in general as well.
As she put it, “They have grown as writers. They love to write now. I’ve moved on to some other writing assignments and they are very excited about each of them. In fact, they ask me if they finish something early, if they can write, so that makes me super proud as a teacher.”
h/t: Good Morning America
