Episode 172: Lucy Butler Part 1: Off To School

We are literally off to school in this conversation with Lucy Butler.

Lucy is also a horse owner and a clicker trainer. She is also a special ed teacher in a high school. At the start of this year she was assigned all the repeaters for freshman year, that is all the students who had failed ninth grade.

I met her last summer via my virtual clinics. In the clinic and then in Science Camp Lucy was introduced to the constructional approach to training. She has taken the concepts and run with them - both with her horse and with her students. She describes her classroom as a bubble of joy. Her students are seeing themselves as individuals who can do well, more than that - they want to do well.

There are so many stories in the news these days about the problems in schools. It’s a bleak picture, so it’s a refreshing change to be able to talk to a teacher who is excited to be in school.

What Lucy is learning is definitely relevant to our horses. So bringing her work from the classroom back to horses via this podcast is a fun loop to explore. I suspect there will be many ripples going out from this conversation.

Enjoy!