SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. (WRGB) — Students from across five counties in the Capital Region and beyond are getting hands-on veterinary training experience in high school, through a first-of-its-kind Small Animal Science program at WSWHE BOCES.
The program, now in its third year, has grown exponentially, currently being offered to two groups of students, who spend half their day at BOCES and the other half at their home school, five days a week.
“The program was started to offer an opportunity that wasn’t here before, and to help fill some employment needs in the local veterinary industry,” teacher Carter Stevens said. “Our program is currently full, with a waitlist, and we did expand our cap this year to 22 students in both the morning and afternoon sessions.”
Each day, students complete one of nine hands-on learning centers on a rotating schedule. Some might be responsible for checking an animal’s vitals, while others could be on cleaning or feeding duty. They also complete assignments and have a more traditional instruction period, which follows Cornell University veterinary curriculum.
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“My students come in and they impress me every day. They are the driving force behind the program. They’re so amazing with the animals,” Stevens said. “A lot of them go on to veterinary technician school, and some of them have the ultimate goal of becoming a doctor, a veterinarian, and just being a small part of that story is really rewarding.”
Students also learn to book appointments, as they would working in a veterinary office, and run the program’s social media account.
“My favorite part is the impact we’ve had on our local shelters. We’ve had very positive feedback. We’ve pulled over 50 animals from local animal shelters in the area to foster them in our classroom, have the students learn on them, and then ultimately adopt them out,” Steven said. “It is a revolving door. Our ultimate goal is to get them a forever home, and in the meantime, we give them a loving home where the students can learn on them while they’re here, and as soon as one gets adopted out, we do pull another animal in their place and get somebody new in.”
A wall of photos in the classroom paid tribute to the cats, dogs, rabbits and guinea pigs that have been adopted out. Staff said the current litter of kittens has already been spoken for, with each of them set to go to their forever homes when they are old enough to do so.
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“We foster animals from all our local shelters, like Hop on Home, North Shore, Saratoga County Animal Shelter, and we basically promote them in our classroom, take care of them, and we put them on our Facebook and Instagram, and people are able to adopt them from there,” senior Kaia Dake said. “It really helps show them off more than they get to be at the shelter, and especially with a lot of kids coming in the classroom, a lot of students and teachers end up adopting a lot of the animals.”
Dake is in her second year of the program, which is offered for juniors and seniors. She said she knew from a young age that she wanted to work with animals.
“Ever since I was little, I had always loved animals and I just grew up wanting to have a career with them. I thought it was a great head start,” she told CBS6. “I did learn a lot more. I never really did much with bunnies or cats or any of that, so it was definitely a lot for a wider range of animals that I was used to.”
Dake said the course has also given her a better grasp on what to look for when it comes to searching colleges’ and universities’ animal programs.
“I would say, definitely try it,” she said. “Some people don’t know what they want to do when they get out of here. They don’t know if they want to have a career with animals or not. But it’s always a good way to test it out; see if you like it or not.”
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