Horse Tales for the Soul

My Teaching Philosophy

As a child whose life was saved by having horses in it, I have always recognized the power of using the Horse as a teaching tool of character building life lessons.  

During the years that I studied riding under several different instructors, I was fortunate enough to meet one that focused on the character building life lessons that are always present when we work with horses. 

Like all good football or baseball coaches, this instructor recognized that if he could teach me how to learn, he could give me the world - and he did.  Like the great football coaches who compare football to life and are constantly drawing the correlations between the two, so did my special riding instructor.  I learned that everything I did on a horse could, and did correlate to everything I did in other areas of my life.  For example; the same courage required of me to jump my first three foot fence was the same courage it took for me to step off the high dive at the lake for the first time or to speak in public for the first time or to go to the dentist or to fly for the first time.  The principals for success over the fence were the same principals of success in all the other areas of my life as well.  Those principals included: 

1. Making the situation as safe as possible,

2. Doing everything you could to be as prepared as you could be for the challenge ahead of you. 

3. Breaking the event down into its smaller parts and train on each of those either mentally, physically or both to ensure you were ready, 

4. Respecting your fear and focusing on working through those fears

5. AND, when all of that was done...jumping the fence in front of you!

For a full summer, I found myself hanging out at the barn from sun-up to sun-down studying every instructor who was working there.  I would watch and listen to all of their lessons (Western, English, Dressage and Jumping) and try to understand why they asked their students to do certain things.  Sometimes, I would try to teach the lesson at the same time in my head and see if what I would have asked the student to adjust or change matched what the instructor actually did. 

From there, I was invited to do the warm-ups with students who were taking lessons.  I would get them tacked up, mounted, double check all their tack, work on basic warm-up skills so by the time the instructor came in, the horse and rider were ready to go.  I took this job very seriously, recognizing that not only the student, but their instructor trusted me to keep them safe and to ensure they were ready to ride. I also felt an obligation to the school horses to make sure they were well cared for, groomed properly, had clean tack and that each student was taught the importance of respecting and caring for the horse you were on.

Those experiences all led to the formation of my own teaching philosophy

which came down to following some simple rules:

1. As a riding instructor, I am completely responsible for the safety and welfare of my horse and rider - if I can't accept that responsibility, I shouldn't be teaching, 

2. My job is to create a safe environment in which learning can happen, while keeping things FUN!,

3. There are no excuses for anyone getting hurt in a lesson with me.  A good instructor is not only watching the rider at all times and anticipating their needs but is also riding the horse from the ground and anticipating the horse's next 10 moves.  In other words, teaching is a thinking man's sport and in order to do it well, it requires you be on your "A" game every time you enter the arena. Like great football coaches, there is the best and then there are all the rest,

4. Success is a building block exercise in which you build one brick at a time.  There are no short-cuts to a sound building that will stand for a lifetime. On the horse this means you focus on teaching the fundamentals of safe, responsible, defensive riding and make sure the rider is well equipped to handle anything that comes up and then you start to add one new skill at a time to that bag of tricks. By doing this, you arm the student with all the skills they will need in order to enjoy a safe, responsible riding experience for the rest of their lives, no matter what style of riding or breed of horse they select.

5. As a riding instructor, it is my responsibility to make sure my rider full understands what I am asking of them and if they don't, it is my job to find a metaphor that will help them make the connection.  This requires intelligence, patience and communication skills,

6. Yelling at a student is a direct reflection of the instructor's inability to communicate effectively and it is not acceptable,

7. Diversity is a good thing.  As a riding instructor, the more riding styles and different breeds of horse I can expose my students to, the more they will recognize the similarities, and that is a good thing.

If you notice, my teaching philosophy focuses on building character and on teaching life lessons that not only apply to riding but also apply to life. I don't believe it is nearly enough to teach someone where the buttons are on a horse.  Teaching someone how to make a horse walk, trot or canter is not nearly good enough.  The opportunity to bring a horse and rider together in an environment in which you can teach not just how to ride but how to live your life fully and completely is a powerful gift and that is what the Horse Tales for the Soul books are all about.  Taking the character building, life changing, horse-related experiences of our authors and sharing them with the world through these books is a chance of a lifetime! 

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