Earlham College | News from Public Affairs

Andrea Todt ’06 talks with Paul Smith ’82 during the first of two workshops on Equine Assisted Learning that Smith, an instructor at Arizona’s Prescott College, conducted at Suzanne Hoerner Jackson Equestrian Center in March. Smith has created the nation’s only master’s program in Equine Assisted Mental Health (EAMH) at Prescott.

RICHMOND, Ind. — While most childhood memories include long days in stuffy classrooms learning division and sentence structure, Earlham College senior Andrea Todt’s recollections are full of days spent assisting and observing her father shoeing horses.

Before enrolling at Earlham, Todt attended only one day of school. She spent her time instead amid the animals she loves.

“I grew up around horses,” Todt says. “From as far back as age four, I just remember jumping in the truck and going with my dad.”

Her one day of formal schooling came during sixth grade and only reinforced her desire to continue learning in the unconventional manner that’s been labeled “unschooling.” The idea is that the desire to learn math, reading, speaking and other essential skills will come about naturally as a child seeks his or her own interests in life.

“It is true that I didn’t really value going to a traditional public school for my education,” Todt says. “I feel like I learned so many different things that I couldn’t have learned in school. I got to travel while other kids sat in classrooms and heard and learned about other places out of books.”

With a little help from her dad, the Arkansas native trained her first horse at age six and by age 11, she had started her own business training horses.

“I learned math by being responsible for keeping track of my money, and that was especially the case when I began training horses and giving riding lessons,” she says. “I was in charge of contacting people, talking to them about their horse and what I could do with them, training the horse, getting paid, showing the owner how to ride the horse the way I’d trained it, and eventually doing taxes.”

Todt admits that she is fortunate her father’s occupation allowed her to be near horses.

“Earlham was sort of a natural step for me,” she adds. “I began playing with the idea of being a biologist and working with animals when I was about 16 or 17 and decided it would be a good idea to go to college while I had the chance. I also wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing anything.”

Her parents encouraged Todt to try college for a year, and her dad introduced her to Earlham. He attended the College and still maintains close friendships with people he met while he was a student here.

The young legacy said she fell in love when she visited the campus. The horse barn and the size of the College were attractive to her, as were the faculty, classes and programs.

“I was really drawn to the Southwest Field Studies Program because that’s the sort of learning I did before college,” Todt says.

During her second year at Earlham, she realized that no other career would satisfy her as well as training horses, and that an Earlham education was about more than choosing and learning a vocation. Todt self-designed her major in outdoor education, and she incorporated horses into her senior project.

“I thought it would be exciting to combine horses and outdoor education,” she says. “In my research, I didn’t find much about that specific area, but I found a lot of information about horses in the therapeutic field.”

Todt is the “left arm” during an exercise in which three persons try to function as one “body.” Participants learn to work as a team and soon discover that what’s successful in one situation is not always so in the next.

Todt began learning about horses and therapy while volunteering during the past two years as a Bonner Scholar at Sunrise, Inc. in Richmond, which offers therapeutic horseback riding for people with disabilities such as autism, Down Syndrome, visual impairments, seizure disorders and spina bifida.

“At Sunrise, I am a leader of horses with students who can’t ride independently, and a sidewalker, to make sure students don’t fall off. But, the majority of what I do is work with the horses,” she says. “Their basic training is on-going, so I ride them in lessons to school the horses, and I work with other volunteers to help care for them.”

Todt’s work at Sunrise led to her interest in the two therapeutic fields that are associated with horses: Hippotherapy and Equine Assisted Learning (EAL). Hippotherapy, which is the focus at Sunrise, is therapeutic riding for people with physical disabilities.

“Basically, Hippotherapy is physical therapy,” Todt explains. “Riders use their muscles and work their bodies to balance.”

EAL, however, is a rapidly growing field utilizing experiential activities with horses for self-discovery and development in the areas of communication, problem solving and leadership skills.

Todt learned that Paul Smith ’82, an instructor at Prescott College in Arizona, is on the forefront of the EAL field within experiential education. Todt contacted Smith, and he agreed to conduct two workshops at Earlham in March.

Smith introduced EAL to Prescott in 1998 and has since created the only master’s program in Equine Assisted Mental Health (EAMH). He also directs the Centaur Leadership Services program at Prescott, which offers EAL and EAMH programs for community youth, undergraduates studying leadership, education, and human development, as well as graduate students pursuing a Master of Arts Degree in Counseling Psychology with a focus in EAMH.

Recently Smith has concentrated on working with horses as partners to develop effective relationship and leadership skills within his students. He has created a month-long equine-based field group facilitation training for undergraduates.

“Horses are incredibly sensitive to non-verbal communication,” Smith says. “Our attitudes are directly mirrored by the horse, so people have to be very intentional when working with horses.”

Horses, explains Smith, have the ability to understand and copy human body language. EAL utilizes this ability through experiential activities to facilitate self-discovery. The non-judgmental process provides participants the opportunity to gain insight as to how they communicate, problem solve, handle situations and achieve goals.

Horse experience is not needed and there isn’t a right or wrong way of doing these activities; it is about the experience and learning how each person accomplishes goals, Smith says.

One example Smith used during the Earlham workshop was Equine Billiards, which required participants to move horses into pockets in an arena without touching or bribing the horses. Participants learned to work as a team and quickly found out that what worked with one horse didn’t work for all horses.

Todt says she gained valuable information during the workshops and by researching her senior project. She will incorporate the information when she returns to her life’s love of horse training after graduation.

“The things I’ve learned at Earlham and the way I’ve grown and changed during the past four years, all of it will be helpful to me in whatever I do after college, whether it’s working with horses, people or anything else I decide to do,” she says. “I have a lot more self-confidence than I used to, and just the general knowledge I have from classes — particularly my education classes — will benefit me later and make me a more aware, and well-rounded person.”

Immediately after graduation, Todt has horses waiting to be trained. In the fall she hopes to begin interning with a couple of specialty horse trainers to perfect her skills.

“I really value experiences,” Todt says. “I think they make us who we are.”

Contact:
Denise Purcell, public affairs assistant
765/983-1323 — E-Mail Denise