When a well-known local riding instructor published an article in a magazine about how students shouldn’t question their instructors, shouldn’t speak unless spoken to, shouldn’t buy any horse except through him and should pay promptly and not cancel lessons, boarders at the barn where he taught had a good hearty laugh. Then there was the other European instructor who refused to teach the canter because he felt that no one in American knew how to canter. Suffice to say, both eventually wore out their welcome in many facilities.
The days of the instructor, as well as the trainer, as an unquestioned authority are long gone, and instructors need to understand that they are providing a service that is like every other service—one that requires paying customers and requires keeping paying customers happy. It’s also a service for which there are many competitors for business, and a heavy-handed, militant approach to teaching is not a constructive learning environment that will attract future clients or retain current ones.
The effective riding instructor has one goal—to bring the student and horse to the best they can be. In doing so, the instructor must always have both the horse’s and rider’s safety in mind, must work to build the rider’s knowledge base and must ensure that the horse is receiving proper training. All the while, both rider and horse should love what they are doing and look forward to your next session. The day the student fears the instructor or loathes the lesson is one of the last days she will be riding with him. And the day that the horse flinches when the instructor makes a motion toward him is the day that horse and rider need to find someone else.
The student should be able to express any concern to her instructor, whether she questions a directive given to her by the instructor or whether she feels overfaced or, likewise, underchallenged in her lessons. Lessons should be a communication process flowing among three individuals in the arena—instructor, horse and rider. The instructor gives the directive, the student should be able to question how or why and the horse will demonstrate if the student has communicated her intent correctly.
The instructor’s personal qualities need to exude kindness, enjoyment of teaching and working with horses and exhilaration when horse and rider get it right.
The professional riding instructor also knows when a student has surpassed the instructor’s training and is ready for a more advanced level of training with someone else. Instructors who retain students who aren’t learning from them anymore just to have a paycheck are as loathsome as those who verbally abuse their students. An example is the hunt seat instructor who can only teach the heels down, shoulders back lesson but cannot explain to the student how to take contact or get her horse to track up, round her back and come softly onto the bit in a correct hunter frame.
As riding instructors we have a duty to see our clients to the best they can be with their horses. We have a duty to deliver quality instruction in a learning environment where the rider comes away from each lesson with a big grin on her face. As instructors, our priority is for the student and her horse not our own pocketbooks.
