Newsletter

Cheval Groupe 

My project was using horses as tools for kids, with and without disabilities. I taught them how to ride by giving them access to opportunities they might not normally have. Growing up I have been around horses my whole life and have had the opportunities to be blessed in many ways from those experience. During my project, I gave these kids access to riding horses and new experiences. I, unfortunately, did not have any students that had disabilities but was fortunate enough to have two consistent participants. I used the iron county fairgrounds facilities to host the riding lessons once a day for two hours Monday through Friday starting January 1st through the 2nd of February.Taking advantage of the beautiful scenery Southern Utah has to offer for a couple sessions I took the kids on trail rides around the county as well. 

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Educating kids on the techniques to ride and proper manners to be around horses was my project goal. Even if this is the only time they where around horses, knowledge is power. Experiences in areas that we do not commonly encounter are something that happens all the time and giving them the knowledge that might help them or someone else later in life is what I hoped to give these kids. I also wanted to educate the participants on the western way of life and why horses and agricultural play an important role in society. Agricultural is part of the world's history and some people do not know some aspects, such as ranching and horses, of it.

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The inspiration for my project came from my background in riding horses and growing up around the way of western life. I have experiences and certain skills and lessons that I learned from all of that and wanted to give back to kids who may not have all the opportunities I had had to learn those. I left it open to having both kids with and without disabilities because of my desire to be an Occupational therapist in the future as well as an equine therapist, using horses as a form of therapy. 

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I faced a couple challenges while planning and accomplishing my project. The first one was finding students to teach and the advertising process. Getting the word out that I needed to find kids to give riding lessons to. Especially advertising that it would be every day for a month and getting people that had the ability and time constraints.  The second challenge I faced was scheduling and planning the lessons around changing schedules. Even with only two students to work around, timing and getting them on the same one each day for the month was difficult. As well as trying to work off of my own busy schedule it was frustrating at times when I had to rearrange the time slots at last minute. 

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I would like to think that I benefited these two kids by giving them the knowledge and courage to ride horses and feel confident enough around them to be safe while enjoying it. I would like to think I gave their parents the reassurance of both those as well and educating them on the way to help aid in their children's tasks of wanting to own, raise, and ride horses.  

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This project made me better at time management and not procrastinating. For future, I now know it takes time and effort to make things great and work out the kinks. I have also learned that is it okay to fail as long as you learn and improve form those failures. As well as learning new teaching skills I learned that I am still learning and can benefit from more new knowledge as well. I learned how to ask and take charge of the things I need and what it takes to get those done. It was one of the best experiences to help influence the lives of others and teach them something I have a passion for. 

    > "I think this was one of the best weeks because the stuff I am teaching them is starting to show and I am having to tell them less on what to do and teaching and tweaking more on what they are doing. The kids also seem to be enjoying the process of learning and I think the games helped them see that even though horses are big responsibilities they can be a ton of fun."

    > "This was a bittersweet week because it is the end of my edge project and the time I get with these awesome kids. It has been an experience for sure and there were things I expected but many things I did not anticipate but appreciated. This week I had the kids go over everything we have learned and why each one was relevant. I also had each of them, on separate days, pick something they wanted to do for the duration of that lesson and it worked out great."

 

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