A light drizzle falls as a bus pulls up to a barn in Glen Arm, MD. Three students disembark. This place is becoming familiar to them.
Waiting inside are several horses, miniature horses, volunteers, and a petite woman with a silver ponytail named Joan Twining.
Joan has a quiet voice and gentle demeanor, but don’t be fooled. She is the powerful force behind the Rose of Sharon Equestrian School, which she created to help children with disabilities, including those on the autism spectrum.
The students here today come from the Forbush School at Glyndon, a special education day school. They come to Rose of Sharon once a week for an hour of therapeutic horsemanship, also known as Equine Facilitated Learning.
With a background in special education and certification from the Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship International, Joan dreamed of creating this school. It opened in 2001.
Science, she explains, hasn’t fully determined why EFL helps children with disabilities, but insists seeing is believing.
“The changes are so profound,” she says. “The students are calmer, they’re more attentive, they’re stimulated but not over-stimulated…Every week they accomplish something.”
These kids knew nothing about horses on their first visit, but now, when they arrive, they quickly join their volunteer team, pick up a tack box, take a horse from its stall, and begin grooming.
Children with higher levels of function do more. One little boy is learning to steer a small horse-drawn cart with a volunteer standing in for the horse. Soon he may be ready for the real thing.
Lauren Baker of the Forbush School at Glyndon sees a difference in the kids from the moment they arrive. “I see their anxiety levels skyrocket down,” she says. “It’s beautiful.”
Rose of Sharon’s volunteer coordinator Melinda Colonna says confidence and other positive effects linger even after the children leave.
“Their teachers say what a remarkable difference there is with these children after a ten-week session,” she explains. “They can even see it after three weeks, in the classroom and at home with their parents.”
Says Joan. “If you were to see what’s in their records and what they’re presenting with, you would never believe they were the same children you just witnessed…They just seem like your average child. And that’s what they get to be here.”
Watching Joan, the volunteers, and the children at Rose of Sharon Equestrian School is amazing. See for yourself in this short video.
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