Program pillars

Broad View EAAT aims to help participants improve their self-regulation and life skills by focusing on their strengths as they learn the joy of working with horses.

Self-Regulation

Horses are prey animals that rely on their fight or flight instinct for survival.  In order to pair effectively with a horse, humans must be able to regulate their emotions.  These skills easily transfer to home, school, work, and beyond to help our participants experience lasting success.

Strengths-Based

Our programs are uniquely focused on the strengths of our participants.  We tailor our activities and instruction to help our participants see what they CAN do.  This helps them to recognize their own strengths, which gives them hope for brighter future. 

Horsemanship

As participants gain basic horsemanship skills, they get immediate practice and feedback on the self-regulation skills that they are learning.  This reinforces generalization of skills to situations outside of the program.  While we recognize that not all of our participants will become lifelong equestrians, our purpose is to help them find hope through horses.

"The kids that we work with here are not kids who are super eager to sit down and talk about everything that's happened to them and all of their issues.  We're addressing some of those issues, but we are doing it in a way that's more approachable, so the kids are more excited and eager to participate.  The beauty of this is that we are teaching them a skill in which they have to be able to regulate themselves to be successful."
                          -Katie Joseph, Equine Specialist in Mental Health and Learning

Our services

Equine Assisted Learning - Intensive 8 week school based programming

This program has an intensive focus on teaching participants self-regulation and growth mindset skills, while also teaching them basic horsemanship skills.  Weekly sessions are 90 minutes in total, with 30 minutes of direct instruction of social emotional skills and 60 minutes of direct instruction of horsemanship skills.  This program is easily adapted to lengths ranging from 8-12 weeks and can be provided at school sites with appropriate grounds to accommodate the horses, or at the barn.  Participants who complete this program learn horse safety, grooming, leading, and navigating an obstacle course with their equine partner.  In order to successfully master these skills, participants have to regulate their emotions in order to have effective communication with their equine partner. 

Equine Assisted Learning - Weekly lessons 

These sessions consist of ground work and/or riding lessons, and session length is determined based upon the age and abilities of the participant.  They are weekly sessions that allow for ongoing instruction in self-regulation and horsemanship skills.

Equine Assisted Life Skills Instruction

These sessions focus on horse care and farm management skills, which help foster self-confidence and a sense of agency, and can help participants successfully gain employment in a farm setting.
"Many of the kids in the program have never even seen a horse and they are often frightened.  We teach them to overcome that fear as well as how to help each other overcome them.  They learn to be supportive of each other, like if another child is struggling, they step in to help."

- Kelly Boyer, Broad View Therapeutic Riding Instructor
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