Elementary welcomes its newest ‘staff member’

Michelle Good is pretty sure that all of her students were pretty excited to get back to school on Monday.
And that includes a young girl named Pickle. Granted, she walks on four legs and doesn’t say much, but she’s going to school this year after the School Board last week voted to allow Good, who teaches kindergarten at New Hampton Elementary School, to have a “classroom dog” in 2020-21.
Good came up with the idea when she and her fellow teachers attended a professional development conference last summer and heard a presentation from an Oelwein teacher who talked about the five classroom dogs that district unitized.
“And I thought, ‘Wow, this is something I’d really like to do.’ I’m a dog person — trust me, I’m one of those people — and when I heard the benefits of having a classroom dog, I thought it was super cool,” she said.
So Good and Pickle, her 3 1/2-year-old golden retriever, underwent training for the latter to become a therapy dog, and Pickle, it turns out, was an exceptional student, passing the test given by an American Kennel Club evaluator with ease.
— For more on this story, see the Aug. 25 Tribune