Hockaday Students Give Shelter Dogs A Voice

The Hockaday School’s sixth grade English classes were given a task — improve their writing skills while focusing on an issue significant to the community. 

The project, a joint venture between Hockaday’s Dr. William B. Dean Institute for Social Impact and the English classes, focused on building empathy and empowerment for the students. The course, which encourages creative writing skills, also expands students’ insight into community issues. 

After researching the overwhelming number of animals served by Dallas Animal Services, students visited the Dallas shelter to take a closer look behind the scenes. 

As each partnered with a shelter dog to delve further into the story behind each animal, the students honed their writing skills. With an engaging hook and vivid descriptive details, each composed a personal biography about a shelter dog, creating a unique voice for each rescue animal. The exercise concluded with a specific call to action. Three students volunteered to visit the shelter and deliver the biographies. 

The assignment proved much more than a practice in writing for the budding wordsmiths — the time spent focusing on individual stories created unexpected personal bonds between the students and the voiceless animals they were tasked to represent. The assignment raised the students’ personal awareness of their broader mission as they shared the stories of the shelter animals with the community, helping prospective families feel more connected to the dogs and, in turn, raising adoption rates. 

Students enjoyed seeing their writing used outside of the classroom.

“I like that it was fun. It helped us with our writing and it supported animals,” sixth-grader Camille Harper said. 

“I enjoyed that we could learn and work for a good cause,” added classmate Piper Flanagan.

For the rescue animals represented — their personal biographies posted outside their nondescript enclosures — their journeys no longer remain obscure to the passersby.