Sebastian Riding Associates (SRA) is an organization that is located in Evansburg State Park in Collegeville, Pennsylvania. They provide a variety of therapeutic riding programs for children and adults with disabilities. Although the majority of their students have physical, intellectual, and mental disabilities, they accommodate all types of disabilities. They continue to expand as the need grows, most recently creating a program for students with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Not only does the organization provide riding and driving lessons to their students, but a lot of children use SRA for their work study at high school. At SRA, the horses and volunteers go through a lot of training to ensure the safety and success of the students.…show more content… For about seven out of the ten hours, I had hands on experience with the students by helping them groom the horses to get them ready for the lessons and being a side-walker during lessons so that someone is there in the case that the student becomes off balanced during their lesson. Although I was there during the lesson, the instruction team had a lead instructor, someone leading the horse, and two side-walkers, so the instructor did most of the talking and interacting with the student. For the remaining three hours, I did odd jobs that SRA needed done. Because I had experience with horses, I helped them with a lot of the horse care such as exercising and feeding. These jobs did not include the students, but included interaction with students from local high schools that use SRA as their work…show more content… Molly* was one of the students that I side-walked for during a lesson. She is in 3rd grade in the Perkiomen Valley School District and she is eight years old. Besides horseback riding at SRA, she also enjoys playing soccer with her siblings in her backyard. Before her lesson, Molly* helped me get her horse ready in the barn. She had a lot of trouble following through on her actions. For example, if she was supposed to be brushing her horse, she would get distracted very easily and stop brushing to pet the cat that walked by. In order to keep her attention, the instructor engaged her by playing games and quizzing her on different parts of the horse. With constant attention and questioning, the instructor was able to successfully grab Molly’s* attention. Once we were in the arena, Molly* had similar problems because there were other riders and instructors in the arena at the same time. She was overly concerned about other students doing different activities than she was at the time. Once again, the instructor used constant conversation and differentiation in activities to help Molly* focus. We did circles in the arena, weaving cones, walking over a bridge, playing a bean bag game, a trail ride, and spelling games. With all of these activities in the short time that she was riding, Molly* had to put a lot of attention into what she was
