This blog was written by Kaushal Pethe, Valley Humane’s Community Programs Senior Manager.
September is National Literacy Month, which has me thinking about the significance of reading and how it impacts a student’s success, both in school and in life. I’m also reflecting with gratitude on how our Paws to Read program supports kids all over the Bay Area with their reading fluency and confidence.
Every month, our volunteers and their therapy dogs sit down with children at 15 schools and libraries throughout the Bay Area and do something simple. They listen. Through Paws to Read, part of our Pet-Assisted Therapy program, close to 550 children get to read out loud to an audience that will never correct them, never grade them, and never compare them to other kids.
That absence of judgment turns out to matter more than you might think.
Reading is a fundamental skill that students use to access every other subject that they are taught. Lack of reading proficiency by third grade is seen as an early warning sign for later academic performance. Kids who read well accumulate vocabulary, background knowledge, and processing fluency faster. That compounding advantage isn’t contained to “reading class.” It becomes the base everything else is built on: following multi-step instructions, extracting the actual question inside a math word problem, or comprehending a science passage well enough to reason about it.
When a child struggles with their reading skills, the typical school intervention often focuses on techniques such as “word attack,” “word supply,” or visual and tactile cueing. These techniques are found to be efficient with children, but what’s not studied enough is the emotional effect on these young learners. A 2024 critical review in Educational Psychology Review (24 studies, 1995–2022) found real inconsistency in which feedback approaches actually help, but the clearest finding was about emotional impact: feedback that corrected inaccurate words did improve fluency, but it also measurably increased negative emotions, specifically in lower-performing students.
Struggling to learn a new skill is hard for anyone and can have a lasting impact on your confidence. This can cause a loop that intensifies feelings of inadequacy and shame. Research shows that this spiral starts when you are young and can continue throughout your whole life.
Anne Cunningham, a UC Berkeley researcher, has pointed out that by the middle of first grade, six- and seven-year-olds are already forming the belief that they are simply not good readers. Cunningham’s research group calls what follows the “downward spiral of shame,” and it’s not just a feelings problem. Shame, once triggered during reading, actively redirects cognitive activity away from the exact processing a child needs to improve. In other words, the fear of failing at reading interferes with the brain’s ability to succeed at it.The emotional response and the skill deficit feed each other.
Early intervention to support children emotionally, especially when they are struggling with reading, can really help close the gap. Children that are experiencing shame related to their reading abilities are often reluctant to read. The negative self-talk that emerges from this deficiency early on is damaging even in other areas of life. Children start internalizing negative thoughts such as “I’m stupid” and find it harder to overcome this later in life.
Reducing the shame young students feel when trying to build critical literacy skills is exactly why Valley Humane Society started “Paws to Read,” a subset of our Pet-Assisted Therapy program. Paws to Read is a specialized intervention that brings trained therapy dogs and their handlers into schools and libraries where children can read to them.
Paws to Read doesn’t teach phonics, and it isn’t trying to replace evidence-based reading instruction. What it removes is the [potentially very judgmental] audience.
Children arrive at each session with a book they’ve chosen themselves and read it aloud to a trained therapy dog and their handler. There’s no correction, no clock, no comparison. For a child who is already bracing for judgment, that’s the intervention: a chance to get the repetition that closing a skill gap requires, without the shame that usually comes with practicing in public. Kids leave with a special bookmark and a sticker featuring the dog they read to, something small that turns each session into an experience worth repeating. They are encouraged to bring the bookmark back each session, to fill it up like a frequent buyer punch card, and collect stickers from multiple dogs over the weeks or months.
Paws to Read currently serves 15 locations and around 550 students every month, supported entirely by our amazing volunteer handlers and their dogs. It’s one piece of how Valley Humane Society shows up for our community beyond our adoption center’s walls, helping kids build confidence in a skill that shapes their lives.
If your elementary school students could use reading buddies with four legs and zero judgment, reach out to Valley Humane Society to learn more about bringing Paws to Read to your school or library.
Interested in becoming a volunteer team with your dog? Our next recruitment round is in process—fill out your application today at https://valleyhumane.org/volunteer/canine-comfort-pet-assisted-therapy-teams/.