By Matt Mackinder
Clarkston News Editor

Independence Township — It’s said that every dog has its day, and for four Clarkston Community Schools therapy dogs, that day was last Friday at Sashabaw Middle School.
Ashli Domsic, a math teacher at SMS, decided to do her first academic service learning/project-based learning project with her students. The district has a handful of therapy dogs in different buildings. In the sixth grade curriculum, the students learn how to find surface area and volume of 3D shapes.
“I decided to combine these two things into a project,” said Domsic. “To launch the project, I invited four therapy dogs into our classroom (one for each hour). I introduced the project to the students that they would need to make a doghouse for that dog. Throughout the chapter, they learned how to make a doghouse and learned the math calculations involved. They designed their dog house in groups of three by using a tinkerCAD program. Then they had to use scale factors to make a cardboard prototype of their doghouse. Each hour’s dog houses (about 7-9 per hour) were voted on by teachers, staff, and parents, and the winning doghouse from each hour got to be built.”
Construction Trades students from Clarkston Junior High School cut the wood for and a Clarkston graduate, Kaylee Shore, helped build the doghouses. The students then painted and decorated the doghouses.
The winning students were Miles Raff, Grace Vogelei, and Ethan Duffy (Cork’s doghouse, Springfield Plains Elementary), Evan Naboychik, London Fletcher, and Lucas Tovar (Frida, CJHS), Brynn Calka, Brooks Rudnik, and Madelyn Swanson (Wiley, SMS), and Eric Bramlett, Melanie Syms, and Chloe Paganes (Nori, CCS Administration Building).
“This project is something I have never even come close to doing in my classroom before,” Domsic said. “It was very complex for both myself and the students, but very rewarding. Students were taking ownership of their projects and spending a lot of time taking measurements and doing calculations to make sure it was perfect for their dog, which is something I had never experienced before. It was so fun being able to watch the students bring out their creative side to design their model doghouse. Their designs were so out of the ordinary and creations I thought would never be possible to make into real dog houses.
“To look at the final products and think back at when this first project began really amazes me, and I am so proud of the work the students did.”

PHOTO: Students and staff gather at Sashabaw Middle School on June 2 to show off the dog houses the students helped design and build for four of the Clarkston Community Schools therapy dogs. Photo: Matt Mackinder