Earlier this month, at the Hero Project reveal event at the Horace Mann Laboratory School, Elisa LaSota’s first grade class honored a special hero, hospice therapy dog Patrick.
LaSota, a hospice volunteer for the nonprofit organization Care Dimensions, is Patrick’s handler when he visits patients at the Kaplan Family Hospice House.
LaSota collaborated with Care Dimensions, formerly Hospice of the North Shore & Greater Boston, earlier in the school year so that Patrick could be revealed as the class hero for the Hero Project, a project she incorporates into her classroom every year. She teaches the importance of recognizing that heroes can be everyday people and pets and that they come in all shapes in sizes. She emphasizes that heroes don’t just wear capes and fly off of buildings like in the books the children read.
The students “corresponded” with Patrick via letters that literacy coach Donna Brady wrote on Patrick’s behalf and with input from LaSota. These letters allowed for more conversation within the classroom about heroes and also allowed the children to guess the identity of their class hero.
The children were surprised to learn that dogs could be heroes and this exercise engaged the children in discussion about compassion and helping people.
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Care Dimensions, one of the nation’s first hospice programs and the region’s largest, provides services in more than 90 communities in Eastern Massachusetts. As a non-profit, community- based leader in advanced illness care, our services include: hospice, palliative care, specialized care programs, Kaplan Family Hospice House, grief support, education and training.
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