Serve It Up 海角社区CI students, faculty and staff. Back row, left to Right: Carolina Rios, Victoria Ferrer, Jasmin Garduno, Pooja Darji, Susana Navarro, FIZZ, Sierra Allison, Edilma Gomez, Ashley Rayne Lowry, KARA, MJ Stutzman, Daniel Seo, Jennifer Raymond, Emily Spitler-Lawson; Front row, left to right: Chaitali Vadgama, Monique Zavala, Janessa Barrera, Jacqueline Villa, Maddie Fernandez, Alyssa Banaszkiewicz
A deeper learning experience
By Pamela DeanShoveling mud and moldy hay isn鈥檛 your typical college curriculum. However, for students enrolled in 海角社区CI鈥檚 Serve It Up Learning Community, the lessons gained from helping to tidy up a local therapeutic riding facility were invaluable.
The Serve It Up Learning Community was created by faculty members Susan Lefevre and Emily Spitler-Lawson, in partnership with 海角社区CI鈥檚 Center for Community Engagement. Serve It Up focuses on service, activism, and social justice as a way to help students gain life skills and a sense of community. As part of that focus, 13 first-year students in Spitler-Lawson鈥檚 Serve It Up English 105 course spent a day during the Spring semester volunteering at the nonprofit Ride On Therapeutic Horsemanship program in Newbury Park. The students cleared mud and moved hay onto trucks after a winter storm caused a drainage channel to clog and overflow, ruining the ranch鈥檚 feed supply.
Although the tasks may have seemed menial, the experience had a profound impact on
many of the participants.
鈥淚 tend to forget that the world can be a very beautiful, loving place, and organizations like Ride On give me hope,鈥 said Pre-Nursing major MJ Stutzman. 鈥淚 felt oddly connected to nature for the first time in a very long time. I came home and emptied hay out of my shoes for a good 30 minutes. I also found this to be a very good bonding experience for us as a unit. I talked to students that I never really had an actual conversation with, and that鈥檚 always a great thing.鈥
The Ride On program teaches adaptive horseback riding to children and adults with physical and cognitive disabilities. The organization also provides physical, occupational, speech, and language therapy, specializing in using the horse鈥檚 movement to improve specific medical conditions.
In addition to cleaning up the ranch, students learned about the nonprofit鈥檚 mission and how riding and interacting with horses can help those with disabilities in multiple ways. They also got to spend time with the horses.
鈥淢y favorite part of the day was definitely getting to meet the horses,鈥 said Pre-Nursing major Susana Navarro. 鈥淏eing around them brought me a lot of peace, which is something I needed, and it put a smile on my face.鈥
According to Spitler-Lawson, visiting the Ride On program helped many of her students who plan on pursuing careers in health care gain new insights into how they can utilize their majors.
鈥淟ots of students hadn鈥檛 even thought about horses as an opportunity for therapeutic care,鈥 explained Spitler-Lawson. 鈥淢any of my students are Health Science majors and told me that they saw how they could connect horses with their career path.鈥
鈥淚 learned so much about horses and their endless benefits,鈥 added Madison Fernandez, another Pre-Nursing major who attended the event. 鈥淎fter getting to feel the horses, I could instantly see how they might comfort someone with a disability or medical condition. I experienced the gentleness of horses and how they can boost your emotional well-being and confidence.鈥
Lefevre has taken students to volunteer at the Ride On facility in the past and agrees
the experience has a powerful impact on students.
鈥淪ome have never been near a horse or gotten dirty. Being outdoors is a wonderful experience for them,鈥 said Lefevre. 鈥淚t really opens their eyes and shows them a totally different world. It doesn鈥檛 feel like academics to them, but at the same time, they are putting together all the things they have learned.鈥
鈥淓very single time we鈥檝e gone out to do a service event as a group, the feeling after helping our community is so rewarding,鈥 said Liberal Studies major Victoria Ferrer. 鈥淚t felt so nice to once again be a part of something bigger than myself. Being a volunteer has so many benefits, not only for me but also for those we get to help.鈥