Animals have always held a special place in my heart, especially growing up. I had many pets ranging from dogs, cats, lizards, and even parrots. We fostered a lot of animals and helped them find loving homes. I believe this is the main reason why I think they hold so many benefits for a person, especially young kids. According to the American Humane Society some benefits include learning empathy, helping anxiety (ie. for testing and so on), teaching responsibility, class participation, and social interactions. This allows for students to excel in the classroom and learn how to regulate their emotions.

Photo by Hannah Lim (Unsplash)

Social Emotional Learning (SEL) focuses on students’ emotions and how that plays a factor into their learning. Animals help regulate SEL by allowing kids to respect and learn from their emotions, while positively creating healthy relationships with school, their peers, teachers, and the animals.

Therefore, students who are struggling with their SEL are able to learn empathy and foster positive friendships with their classroom animals. By learning how to treat animals properly, students are able to use those ideologies of SEL and apply it to human relationships, which in turn enhances their social interactions.

Although, there are limitations to having animals in the classroom such as health risks (allergies, asthma, bacteria, etc), receiving parent and school consent, and financial up-keep of the animals’ costs such as veterinary visits and food. So the real question is does the ‘good’ (improving SEL in classrooms and in everyday lives) out weigh the ‘bad’ (administrative legalities, allergies, cost, etc)?

As a future educator I would love to include animals in my classroom, as I believe that growing up with animals helped me turn into the person I am today because of the life lessons I was taught, such as my SEL, helping anxiety, relieving stress, and my empathy skills.