CHAPTER 1
Reaching for the Reins
I believe every great teacher starts as a student who had a great teacher.In my experience I encountered two of these great teachers. I metMr. D in seventh grade. Up to that point, I had come to recognizethat school didn't come without a hard-won effort. Throughout mygrade school years I struggled with academics. Mr. D showed methat I was capable of accomplishing anything to which I appliedmyself. He did not disguise that I would have to work harder thanmy peers, but he taught me that with motivation and hard workcomes the joy of success. With this perspective, I applied myselfwith a tenacity that eventually led me to my second great teacher.
My introduction to Ms. K occurred toward the end of my bachelor'sdegree in an education methods class at Western Michigan University.Her approach to defining the boundaries of education blurred thelines between standardization and abstraction. Ms. K possessed arare view of education that allowed her to see her teaching from theperspective of those most affected by it—her students. During oneof her classes, she told a story that forever changed the way I solveproblems as an educator.
One evening while cooking dinner, her year-old daughter beganfussing as she played on the kitchen floor. Instead of becomingfrustrated with her, Ms. K got down on the floor and looked at thesituation from her young daughter's eyes. She noticed that from herdaughter's perspective, the only stimuli in the child's world were thedrab cabinet doors and Mommy's feet scurrying about the room.Her solution was to remove a few of the cabinet doors and install afish tank at floor height. As I transitioned from being a student toa teacher, I always told myself that I wanted to instill motivation inmy students and use the fish tank philosophy for solving problems.
In August 2005, I married my high school sweetheart and startedteaching mathematics at Cedar Lane Alternative High School lessthan a week later. My induction into the world of teaching wasswift and clarifying. As I walked into class the first day, I wasgreeted by two of my students comparing ankle tether bracelets,each bragging about the distance they could travel without settingit off. This was my introduction both to education and alternativeeducation. When I reflect back on this, I'm truly grateful for thiscontext, as it provided a shock that I naturally associated with theterm "alternative." The word means a million different things to amillion different people. In the context of education, it might onlymean five or six things to a million different people. It is with thisunderstanding that I'll explain what my eight years of teaching theseremarkable students has taught me about who alternative studentsare and what they're capable of when pulled back from the cracksthey've been allowed to slip through.
Cedar Lane
Cedar Lane Alternative High School was established in 1990 asan alternative means for students who don't fit into the traditionalhigh school to obtain their high school diplomas. Perhaps the mostnotable difference between alternative education and a traditionaleducation is that alternative education attracts a broader spectrumof students whose difficulty assimilating into a general educationformat challenges their ability to obtain an equitable education.It is this quality that gives them a unique commonality with eachother, an alternative perspective on how they might most effectivelyinteract in their education.
Our students come from exceptionally diverse backgrounds. Someof the circumstances surrounding their journeys to Cedar Laneinvolve the death of a parent or parents, living in foster care, parentalabandonment and complications from living with family members,health issues, rape, poverty, trouble with the law, and pregnancy andparenthood. For many of these students merely getting by from day today is a struggle. Although all schools are comprised of students whocome from these circumstances, Cedar Lane serves approximatelyninety of the surrounding districts' hard-luck students who fall intoat least one (and usually multiples) of these categories.
The vision of Cedar Lane is to help students earn their diploma andencourage them to integrate into their communities in a positiveway. The school's mission statement is to ensure that every student
• succeeds academically;
• gains knowledge and skills needed to be a responsible,productive citizen; and
• appreciates one's self and others.
The Cedar Lane staff has worked extraordinarily hard over theyears to not only meet state and national education requirements inunique ways that best serve the diverse student population but toalso instill in the students a greater sense of community involvementand self-worth. Over the past eight years, the staff and studentshave revamped existing community outreach initiatives as well ashaving developed new ones. The Reaching for the Reins programwas started in the 2007-08 school year to promote communityservice, and in the same year Cedar Lane spearheaded a Niles GivesBig donation drive that raised $70,000 in goods, services, and cashfor a local family in need. These innovations turned the tables onwhat most people came to expect from an alternative high school.Instead of focusing on student inequalities, the school decided toembrace their challenges and, despite all odds, reach out to thecommunity in big ways. Cedar Lane's and Niles Adult Education'saccomplishments were recognized at the Michigan Association ofCommunity and Adult Education award ceremony in 2008, wherethe school received the Program of the Year award for the state ofMichigan. Yet even more rewarding than the award itself, the staffwere able to announce that a record number of 2008 graduates wereattending post-high-school training programs and college, morethan at any previous time in the school's history.
With such success, one might think Cedar Lane is a state-of-the-artfacility with the latest curriculum aids and cutting-edge technology.This could not be further from the truth. The Cedar Lane campusis comprised of a small brick building that served as the communityelementary school in the 1960s. This building is called the mainbuilding and houses two classrooms, the facility's restrooms, anda computer lab/lunchroom, which is made up of hand-me-downcomputers from around the district. The rest of the campus is madeup of four portable trailers, three of which are classrooms and thefourth of which is the office. Recently, grant monies were secured toupdate classroom technology to include Apple classroom projectors,and the district provided the school with four new student computersthat are set up for students to create graphic arts projects.
Materital things and techology, though, are not what make aneffective classroom. What makes Cedar Lane a success is people—Reachingnot just the dedicated staff who work together to ensure the best isoffered each day to each student, but also the students themselves.Many of their backgrounds are inconceivable and most have beentold or led to believe that they will not graduate and will neveramount to anything in life. It is the courage and persistence of thesestudents, each of whom decided to start over at Cedar Lane and usethe opportunity to work hard to meet their goals, which make theschool successful.
My Journey
When I started my teaching career, I did not understand my studentsas I do now. Like most people, I was excited to get a job rightout of college and was eager and willing to learn. Over the courseof my college education, I was indoctrinated with the knowledgethat my first year of teaching would be crazy, but none of thosewarnings could have prepared me for the experience. There is anextremely high emotional and physical toll as you slog throughyour first real-world experience creating course outlines, developinglesson plans, conducting parent-teacher conferences, dealing withclassroom management, and a whole array of other unanticipatedfirsts—all this while futilely trying as a new teacher to implementthe multitude of strategies you spent five years of college learningabout, only to discover their implementation in the real world is attimes impossible, and is a far cry from the effective methods yourtextbooks boasted they would be.
It was not until my second year that I was finally able to "figure it out"and get beyond mere survival. For a teacher, this accomplishmentbrings a sense of ecstasy. This is, however, short-lived, as the realtruth of the matter invariably dawns on you: you will never figureeverything out, and it will never be smooth sailing. Teaching, despiteits many eventual successes, is saddled with an equal number offailures and is frequently characterized by the struggle of coming toterms with many new and unique challenges on a daily basis. Yet, inmy opinion, the expectation of new adventures lingering around thecorner is precisely what keeps teaching meaningful and challengingand inspires the pursuit. I say pursuit because that is exactly how itfeels to me—like I am chasing new concepts of how to engage mystudents to learn more and become active participants.
After two years I eventually settled into my role and began to gainan understanding of which methods were most effective in teachingmath to a group of disengaged and rambunctious teens. It was onlythen that I realized math was only a small part of what my studentsneeded. My obligation to them did not merely start and end eachday in the classroom but extended well beyond that into a very real,very adult world they would soon be thrust into, ready or not. Inthem I recognized a need to learn responsibility, to have a place in acommunity, and to learn to work as a team, along with an array ofother things I did not feel my math classroom could offer them. Tothis end, we started doing projects to tie the math they were learningback to real-world applications. But despite this, I knew they neededsomething more substantial, more outside the box. This is where Isat down on the kitchen floor and tried to come up with my ownfish tank strategy for reaching these kids.
How Horses Came into Play
The evolution of Reaching for the Reins can very easily betraced back to a childhood fondness for horses. For about fifteenconsecutive years, my family vacationed a week every summer atCamp Au Sable, a Christian family camp in Grayling, Michigan.My friend Sarah's family lived about four hours north of where Igrew up in southwestern Michigan, and because we infrequentlysaw each other during the regular course of a year, our familiesvacationed together each summer. It was at camp where the two ofus fell irrecoverably in love with horses. Most of the pictures of thetwo of us involved horses, cowboy boots, and cowboy hats, and ourletters to each other throughout the year always included our hopesof new horse adventures. When I was in sixth grade, my familymoved from the city into the country and bought two horses, onea fifteen-hand black-and-white appaloosa gelding named Shadowand the other a thirteen-hand buckskin pony named Nacho,who became my buddy. I fondly recall finding peace with Nachothroughout my own tumultuous teenage years, whether hangingout in the shed or taking him for a ride around our five-milecountry block.
Nacho died my senior year of high school, and when I went tocollege, I simply did not have time for horses anymore, so my familyeventually sold Shadow. Even though I no longer owned a horse, myhorse-crazy nature never changed. Anytime I had a chance to ridewith a friend or vacation somewhere where trail riding was possible,I jumped at the opportunity.
Introduction to Equine Therapy
While having lunch one afternoon with a friend, she casuallymentioned her involvement in volunteering with the TherapeuticEquestrian Center (TEC), a local organization whose mission was toenhance the lives of people with special needs through horse-relatedactivities. She told me how, one night each week, she volunteeredat the farm, where she assisted a person with physical or cognitivedisabilities with riding a horse. I have always been a person who seeksinvolvement and have enjoyed participating in church programs andoutreach as well as school projects that promoted giving back to thecommunity. While growing up, this involvement gave me a senseof community, purpose, and motivation I did not find elsewhere inmy life. And since I am horse crazy, it occurred to me this might bethe perfect opportunity for me to reinvolve myself in working withhorses and satisfy a persistent itch for helping others at the sametime. However, as the school year progressed, my schedule took meanother direction, and my thoughts of volunteering went out thewindow. The school year ended, and I spent my summer workingtoward my master's degree.
My interest was rekindled the following fall when I saw a boothadvertising for TEC at the local fair. I chatted with the volunteerrunning the booth and grabbed a flyer. As the school year got underway, I contemplated how I would work volunteering into my busylife. As my students trickled in and out of my class on that first dayof school, I began to consider how they, too, would benefit fromvolunteering in their community at an organization like TEC andhow much comfort I had received in my adolescent years frominteraction with horses.
Our First Year
Determined to finally follow through, I pulled out the flyer, surveyedthe website, and made a phone call to see if they would be interestedin having a group of student volunteers. I got a warm reception fromthe director, who wanted me to stop by for a meeting to discuss howwe could implement a program mutually beneficial for both theirorganization as well as one that met my students' needs.
As I pulled into the long driveway to the farm office, I could seehorses grazing in a large pasture, and I began again to feel the senseof peace I remembered as a teen. The director and I retreated to alocal coffee shop, where we could talk without disturbing the otherfour volunteers, who were bustling around the office busily keepingthe nonprofit organization in motion. Little did I know the impactthe decisions made in that meeting would have both in my life andin the lives of my current and future students.
We decided the program would start by bringing a group of studentsto the farm every other week throughout the fall and winter with theintent to learn how to work around the farm and to begin fosteringa knowledge of horses. Then, in the spring, we would partner mystudents as teachers for a group of students with special needs. Inorder to stay in the program, my students would have to keep uptheir grades and attendance.
The next day at school, I pulled together a small group of girls anddelegated them the honor of coining a name for our new program.They batted around numerous ideas, but it was our English teacherwho prompted them to come up with Reaching for the Reins, whichwe often affectionately shorten to R4R.
The first week my students and I had no idea what to expect. Wearrived at the farm eager-eyed and ready to work, uncertain asto exactly what we'd be doing. We stepped off the bus and weregreeted by the young, enthusiastic barn manager, who took us ona tour of the facility and outlined our list of tasks to accomplishfor the day. Quite frankly, I was surprised how hard the studentsworked. Though many had never experienced the manual natureof farmwork before, their collective enthusiasm made short work ofmoving hay, picking rocks from pastures, cleaning stalls, scrubbingbathrooms, and sweeping walkways. I was truly impressed at seeingwhat a dedicated group of teens can accomplish when given a littledirection.
As the weeks progressed, the students began spending time learningthe basics of horsemanship: how to groom and saddle, and the tricksfor teaching someone to ride. The students learned to use a systemwhere one student leads the horse and two others stand on either sideto make sure the rider stays safe and secure in the saddle. I found itreaffirming to see their individual personalities develop as a resultof spending time with the horses and each other. On more thanone occasion, I observed students spending thirty minutes in a stallgrooming, and when they emerged, it was evident they had gottenmore out of the deal than the horse.
As spring approached, the director of TEC informed me a teacherhad contacted her thinking their group would be a good match formy students to mentor as riders. Finding the right group of ridingstudents was extremely important. We wanted a group of studentsthat would benefit from the mentoring and horse therapy as well asshow the Cedar Lane students their efforts were appreciated. Wefound this group with Lighthouse Education Center. Much likeCedar Lane, Lighthouse is a school for a population of students whoselife journeys took them outside the traditional school setting.
