Dogs roam the hallways and classrooms at a school on Long Island. While taking tests, students sometimes hear parrots squawk and peacocks crow. It’s all part of the draw.
Kellenberg Memorial High School is home to four dogs, two peacocks, five peahens and nine parrots, some of them rescue animals. Turtles and fish also live on campus.
Brother Kenneth Hoagland, the principal, said that — in addition to preparing students academically for college — the private Catholic school educates students through its animals.
“I call them sometimes guard dogs,” Hoagland told The Washington Post. “They guard against fear, depression and anxiety.”
Students line up outside offices to pet the dogs between classes — especially before and after lunch and at the end of the day.
They’re not therapy dogs, but Hoagland, 66, said: “One visit to the dogs is sometimes worth two to the guidance counselor. It just helps to get their mind off their troubles.”
Amelia Campbell is nearly midway through her senior year, meaning she has a lot on her plate: finishing college applications, keeping up her grades and spending her free time in extracurricular activities like the speech and debate team and the drama club.
When Campbell gets overwhelmed during the school day, she goes to find Matthias, a Yorkshire terrier whom she became close with when he roamed her church history classroom two years ago. Now, Campbell hangs out with Matthias between classes and walks him in the courtyard past a pond of turtles and koi fish during study hall.
“High school in and of itself is a little rough,” Campbell said. “But being able to take a break in your day and walk around with the dogs always makes you feel a bit better.”
The Uniondale, New York, school opened in 1987 under the Marianist order, a Roman Catholic congregation. Six brothers from the order began living on the building’s third floor that year, and they brought a Bernese mountain dog and an Australian shepherdwith them.
As more brothers moved into the building in the following years — 13 now live there — they expanded their animal assortment.
A brother who collected birds brought a blue-and-gold macaw that resembled the school’s colors, in 1997. He was named Firebird based on the school’s mascot. The brothers then began taking in rescued and surrendered parrots. In 2000, the brothers bought a peacock and peahen, who lived in the courtyard and began having offspring.
Now, there are two ponds and fish tanks on the 21-acre campus. Parrots greet students from enclosures in the lobby by bobbing their heads and chirping. Peacocks and peahens stay in the courtyard, where they sometimes fly away before maintenance workers whose jobs are to feed and pick up after the birds track them down.
In a middle school in the same building, a classroom is filled with cages that include turtles, snakes and parakeets — animals students care for.
When Conor Stanton, a junior at Kellenberg Memorial, began attending the middle school in seventh grade, he saw Hoagland standing outside the entrance on the first day with his Samoyed, Beato. The dog reminded Stanton of his family’s two dogs, a border collie and a mutt.
“When I saw it, I knew that I made the right choice coming here,” Stanton said.
At the start of this school year, Hoagland stood near the entrance with a new Samoyed, Magnus, after Beato died in August.
Another member of the religious order also recently bought a puppy: Frassati, a miniature Bernese mountain dog named after the canonized saint Pier Giorgio Frassati. Magnus and Frassati joined 9-year-olds Matthias (named after the apostle) and Goretti (a goldendoodle named after the late Catholic saint Maria Goretti). The dogs live with the Marianist members year-round.
To ensure Magnus was comfortable around people, Hoagland said he walked the puppy across campus near the start of the school year to meet some of the roughly 2,500 students attending the high and middle schools.
Staff members also bring in their own dogs. A history teacher instructs alongside Lily, a Labrador retriever, and the guidance director has a corgi and poodle mix named Riggs.
When senior Patrick Ciampa took tests in a U.S. history class last year, he said his nerves settled when Lily sat by his feet in the front row. In the fall, Ciampa said, it has been peaceful to watch Marianist brothers walk dogs on the track surrounding the field during football practice.
“It just kind of reminds me to bring myself back to center,” Ciampa said.
Students with allergies stay away from the animals, school leaders said, and the animals have never hurt anyone.
Tara O’Donoghue, who graduated from Kellenberg Memorial in 2006 and is now a spokeswoman for the school, said that while some animals have come and gone in the past few decades, their calming effects on students have remained.
“We wouldn’t know what Kellenberg was like without them,” said O’Donoghue, 37.
Campbell, the senior who has bonded with the Yorkshire terrier Matthias, said she doesn’t know what her future holds. She wants to study political science and journalism in college. But she’s certain of one thing in her future.
“Obviously,” she said, “I’m coming back to see Matthias.”
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