Lesson overview

We're often asked, “What is the goal of your program? What are you trying to achieve?” These are excellent questions. Equine-assisted learning and therapeutic horsemanship promote the development of life skills utilizing an experiential approach to learning with equine-assisted activities. Each session's structure is designed to magnify the horse's impact on helping students improve on the specified goal or characteristic. Each session will include similar, intentionally designed components:

1. Check-in: When groups arrive, we take a few minutes to ask the students about their week and assess what they may bring into the lesson for the day. This time can help facilitators know how best to utilize movement or teach regulation techniques before engaging in an activity with the horses.
2. Warm-up: As there are various learning styles, we strive to provide instruction for every learner. We utilize various activities at the start of groups to help meet all learning methods and get the brain ready to glean as much as possible from the equine-assisted activity later in the lesson.
3. Movement: Research shows movement increases learning and increases the body's ability to focus. We utilize different movement types, including stretching, yoga, balance exercises, and mounted activities, to facilitate the learning and retention of program content. Movement may also be sprinkled in sessions if a student starts to get restless to help re-engage learning.
4. Equine-assisted activity: Our equine-assisted activity's main focus is to look for the opportunity to make isomorphic bridges (relating or making a connection between the activity with the horses to life skills and real-life situations). For instance, noticing a horse appearing anxious when a student is loud and moving erratically allows the student to create awareness of how their behaviors impact others. The instructor can then make a bridge by asking, “Have you ever noticed this same energy at school or in the classroom? How did the students react?” to help the student start making these connections.
5. Check out: At the end of groups, instructors will check-in with the students to see where the students' level of energy is and what they took away from the day's lesson.

Although our program does include mounted work, we do not provide traditional riding lessons. When a student reaches a point to where mounted work begins, it does not mean all future sessions will include mounted work. We have learned students must understand this fully to manage expectations and avoid disappointment and setbacks.