Learning is beyond a classroom’s four walls, especially at Harris County Department of Education’s (HCDE) four special schools where educators offer non-traditional instruction to unique student populations including those with severe physical and emotional disabilities, students facing addiction and adjudicated youth.

At a traditional school, these students may not join certain field trips. But at HCDE, extracurricular activities are the norm.

HCDE has offered equine therapy for students for a few years, but this year three of the alternative campuses are exposing students to an enhanced equine experience that includes riding lessons and adventure trail rides.

The experience has already seen positive results. For students like Jerry Garza and his Fortis Academy classmates, riding a horse is a positive and refreshing experience on their paths to gaining and maintaining sobriety.

“Being able to get on a horse, be at peace and have that out-in-the-country feeling was soothing compared to the lifestyle and surroundings I’m used to,” Garza said. “It was more than any mind-altering substances could have done. Just a pure dopamine rush and a great experience.”

Equine therapy helps self-esteem and confidence through feeding, grooming and caring for horses. Through riding, students build core and muscle strength as well as communication skills to go with their increased social-emotional learning.

In 2019, former Academic and Behavior School West Principal Victor Keys and students began monthly visits to the Self-Improvement through Riding Education (SIRE) facility where students learned about various aspects of horsemanship. ABS East, Fortis Academy and Highpoint School students quickly joined in with field trips for their students.

In recent years, ABS West students have visited Reining Strength Therapeutic Horsemanship center in Richmond each month, as the facility is closer to the school.

Cypress Trails Ranch offers a unique experience for students as well as a more central location for ABS East, Fortis and Highpoint. The three campuses started visiting Cypress Trails Ranch in November.

Owner Darolyn Butler, an internationally acclaimed endurance rider, said she quickly connected with HCDE’s student population.

“We were asked if we were up for the challenge,” she said. “We have two developmentally-challenged young men that work for us full-time, so we are familiar with unique populations.”

Butler has also employed wranglers dealing with addiction, recently having one head back to a rehabilitation center.

“So, if we’re not qualified enough to work with these students, I don’t know who is,” she said.

In groups up to 10, ABS East, Highpoint and Fortis students and staff visit once a week in three-week stretches. The first visit is to the facility’s equine interactive experience, which includes history and physiological lessons of horses. Students also touch a horse, often for the first time, groom the horses and put saddles on and off.

The second round is called “Join Up,” where students work on the relationship between human and horse. Like a follower naturally drawn to a leader, a horse can be drawn to a human and “join up,” moving when the person decides which direction to go. This builds social and relationship skills students use in everyday life. Students ride for 30 minutes following the Join Up.

The third visit is a full hour and sees students riding the horses on nearby trails. Butler and her team tailor each trip based on how much the students have picked up in the previous weeks as well as their varied comfort levels.

Butler makes it a point to try and attend every session, but has ensured her wranglers are comfortable instructing and working with non-traditional clients.

“You have to be patient,” she said. “We have some students who are terrified and some that are not real communicative, but the horse is the common ground. When they turn that horse around the first time in a 360-degree turn all by themselves, it’s very empowering.”

The program has seen positive results, which campus staff say carries over to other aspects in life.

“It helps them stay motivated and gives them something to actually look forward to,” said Fortis Academy counselor Nakia Lee-Francis, who grew up around horses and has joined the students during visits. “It’s a change of environment, exposure to something new for many of them and it’s something positive.”