The 315 students at AIM Academy will soon welcome a four-legged companion into their midst. Kelly, a black lab-mix from local service dog organization Paws and Affection, will become the school's first on-campus facility dog. She will assist in easing anxiety, aid in practicing mindfulness, help students complete tasks in speech and occupational therapy sessions, provide motivation in learning, and even help bolster confidence in reluctant readers.

"AIM Academy prides itself on having an evidence-based curriculum and finding multiple ways to help students with learning differences succeed," said Middle School Head Ed Gallagher. He went on to say, "Adding Kelly to our campus seems like a perfect fit for our goal of teaching literacy every day."

Gallagher, AIM teachers, and students first met Kelly, trained by Lower Merion-based Paws and Affection, this fall when the team came to meet with 5th graders for a presentation on service dogs. This was initiated by Paws and Affection volunteer and AIM parent, Lori Goodman, who often brings her certified therapy dog Hamilton to school.

Goodman believes having Kelly at AIM full-time will help anxious students. She feels Kelly will be a friendly, furry face to greet children in the morning and can even be a fantastic listener for a child lacking the confidence to read aloud.

"My son asks all the time if I can bring our therapy dog to school," she said. "And we're not just there for the kids. Evidence shows that your blood pressure drops and you become more relaxed when you're around a dog."

In fact studies do show that people's blood pressure drops and relaxation increases when you're around a dog. A recent KQED article examined the growing evidence that reluctant readers gain confidence and improve reading when they read aloud to a dog.

"We are thrilled to have forged a partnership with AIM and look forward to witnessing the tremendous impact Kelly will have on the students there," said Paws and Affection founder Laura O'Kane. "Kelly will be more than a therapy dog available for pets and snuggles. She will also make use of a large variety of skills she's learned over the last two years."

Beyond what a typical therapy dog offers, Kelly has over 40 trained behaviors that speech and occupational therapists will use to augment their sessions and further motivate students. For example, a typical activity in an OT session might involve several different toys on the floor that Kelly could put in a basket. The student could then practice sequencing skills by repeating back the order in which she put the toys away, both forward and backward. In speech sessions, simple obedience cues like "sit" and "back" provide students a fun opportunity to practice pronouncing challenging sounds like "s" and "ck".

While many schools provide occasional visits from therapy dogs to students, Kelly, as a fully trained facility dog, will be at AIM every school day working with her handler team made up of three AIM faculty members. It's a similar technique Ivy League schools like Harvard and Yale have adopted in their medical and law schools where therapy dogs are in residence at the school libraries.

"Having a facility dog on campus will provide AIM's highly-trained faculty with yet another tool to use when working with students on a variety of tasks both emotional and academic," said AIM Associate Director and co-founder Nancy Blair.

In fact, Kelly has already spent several hours working at AIM. She was visiting during midterms in January with two other Paws and Affection dogs to bring some stress relief to the students. During this visit, there was an unscheduled fire alarm. While students waited to return to the building, Kelly provided a much-needed distraction for a student with anxiety over fires and fire alarms. O'Kane said it was wonderful to watch how calm the child stayed as he pet the dog and told her about all the things he knew therapy dogs could do.

Kelly will spend the next month or so continuing her training with her AIM handlers and visiting school to get acclimated to the classroom environment. Students should look for her to be a regular part of the school population in April.