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JURY FOURTH-GRADER Jamal Patterson pets Ace, one of two basenjis owned by teacher Daniel Ryno and his wife, dog groomer Jessica Ryno. Fourth-grader Sarah Jackson gets ready for her turn as Batman, the second basenji, looks on. The students learned and wrote about basenjis before the dogs were brought to the classroom for a surprise visit.

If you ever wondered what breed of dog is pictured in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, there is a classroom full of fourth-graders at Jury Elementary School who can tell you what makes these pooches special, thanks to clever teaching by Daniel Ryno, who is a lover of all that is Basenji.

Ryno’s students are now Basenji lovers as well. It started when Ryno read them an old story out of Reader’s Digest about a dog who did not bark.

“I read them a short story called ‘Good-Bye My Lady’, that was published I think, in the ’50s in Reader’s Digest. It’s about a kid who finds a strange dog,” Ryno said. “It turns out to be a Basenji. It was small, fast and made strange noises. I didn’t tell them I had a Basenji.”

Afterward, Ryno said the students completed a graphic organizer about traits of a Basenji they learned about in the story. His wife, dog groomer Jessica Ryno, who recently published an article about Basenjis, brought their dogs to Jury for a surprise classroom visit.

“When she came in, I switched places with her and went outside with the dogs,” Daniel Ryno recalled about the other visitors for his unsuspecting students. “A few minutes later I came in—and their faces lit up.”

The bulletin board outside his classroom is covered with photos of students with the Basenjis and with copies of the dogs in hieroglyphics. It is posted alongside the children’s writing.

“Basenjis remind me of me,” wrote fourth-grader Myia Williams. “Because sometimes I get into a lot of trouble and I’m stubborn sometimes.”

“Did you know Basenjis also do not like water?” classmate Alexis Clark wrote. “I think that’s the reason they groom themselves.”

“Basenjis don’t like the cold weather so you will need to buy them a sweater,” wrote fourth-grader Darrion Wise. “Basenjis may or may not make a good pet for you because they are tricky, and they are stubborn, and escape artists.”

An interesting topic for children and two adorable pooches, “Ace” and “Batman,” combined to bring about success in the classroom. Ryno said student writing improved after his own Basenjis visited his students to connect what they studied to a hands-on learning experience.

“I went from having students who started out getting ones (out of four) on their writing prompts and they are turning in these beautiful five-paragraph papers,” Ryno said. “Their scores have gone up. They are able to see more clearly that one paragraph is about one idea. They’ve applied this not only to this piece of writing, but everything else since then.”

The curly-tailed hunting dog from Africa is also quite the topic of conversation for some fifth- and sixth-graders, too. They also learned about Basenjis in Ryno’s class when they were in the fourth grade.

And now that it’s time to change his bulletin board, Ryno expects the display will continue to bear a few paw prints.

“Next, I’ll probably have my students select other breeds of dogs to research and write papers about them,” he said.
(Story and photo courtesy of Hazelwood School District)
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