Facilitating Learning



Although I often call myself an educator, it’s a lie. Okay, I’m being overly dramatic. It’s just not the most accurate way to describe what I do. I don’t educate people; I facilitate their learning. If you train horses or raise kids, you probably get the distinction immediately. The best we can do for either is set up a situation wherein learning can occur.

When I talk about learning, I’m talking about more than just memorizing facts. That’s a superficial level of learning, much like gathering the ingredients needed for baking a cake. Doing something with those ingredients is where it gets interesting. Whether the process results in a yummy cake or insights produced through reflection and activity, we end up with something much more desirable when processing is involved.

Recently I gave several talks before packed crowds at Equine Affaire in Ohio. The lecture is a classic way of offering up the ingredients for a learning experience. If my lecture is relevant and thought-provoking for my audience, chances are pretty good that ideas will start rolling around in some noggins and a bit of processing will occur. For those folks who talked to me one-on-one about their horses, the likelihood of learning increased dramatically, and not because of anything I did. It was what they did. They became active learners, formulating questions, taking in my responses, breaking apart ideas and putting them back together in ways that made sense to them. In the language of constructivist learning theory, they were creating meaning, a much higher form of learning than simply memorizing facts.

Now just because creating meaning is a high-level form of learning doesn’t mean that all learning must be active. For example, if I ask you for directions to the airport, I want unadorned facts to flow from your brain into mine. I learn the directions by simply accepting what you have told me. When I drive that route, your directions may take on new meaning as I view the scenery, but that embellishment wasn’t critical to what I wanted to learn.

Final thought for today: Natural learning occurs every day as we interact with the world around us. It’s effortless and highly effective.  The challenge facing education today, in my humble opinion, is understanding exactly how natural learning occurs and how it might be used to produce the outcomes we want. If we can facilitate that kind of learning, everyone wins.

You can read more at my learning blog:  http://ricklamblearning.blogspot.com/

Mistakes

Irish author, James Joyce (1882-1941), noted that, “Mistakes are the portals of discovery.” As horsemen, we can learn a lot from mistakes, both our own and those of others.

A case in point is Pat Parelli’s "Road to the Horse" buckoff, one of many memorable RTTH moments shown in this week’s TV show. For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, Pat failed to properly prepare his colt from both sides before mounting – that’s his analysis of what happened – and the colt bucked him off. It made a good lesson for us all. However, an even more important lesson came after. As we pointed out on TV, Pat got right back to work and had his colt coming along beautifully by the end of the event. He didn’t win – Chris Cox chalked up #3 – but Pat deserves big kudos for how he handled himself in a difficult situation.

Seeing mistakes as learning opportunities is not license to be careless or unprincipled in our actions, but it does put a positive spin on the honest misstep.

By the way, Pat teams with 2010 champ, Craig Cameron, to take on Canadians, Jonathan Field and Glenn Stewart, and Aussies, Dan James and Guy McLean, in the first ever International Road to the Horse. Dates are March 9-11, 2012. Get your tickets early, my friends.

Watch Road to the Horse Retrospective on The Horse Show
Get tickets to Road to the Horse International

Thoughts on the Parelli System

Parelli Natural Horsemanship is one of the most popular horse programs ever conceived. Hour 2 of this week’s radio show is a classic interview with Pat and Linda Parelli in which they give us a behind-the-curtain peak at how their system developed. They talk about their teachers, their struggles and those “ah ha!” moments when their understanding reached new levels. Of the many interviews I’ve done with them, this is one of my favorites.

I got my first glimmer of understanding about natural horsemanship from a demo Pat Parelli did about 13 years ago. I can’t say I’m a Parelli student in the technical sense, but since that day I’ve certainly studied their work, attended numerous events, and even bought a couple of their horses. I’ll admit, I’ve had special access. Friendship aside, I think they have a lot to offer, and if I had to sum up their strengths up in one word, it would be organization.

There is no doubt that Pat Parelli is a fine horseman, but that isn’t what makes him a key player in this modern revolution in horsemanship. It’s his ability to communicate intangibles in ways that people understand that makes him important, for at its heart, this revolution is really a revolution in communication.

So much about reading and riding horses comes down to the feel of the moment. How do you teach that to someone? It’s akin to describing a sunset to a blind man. Yet, somehow Pat has done that without oversimplifying or diminishing the wonder of this creature. Furthermore, he’s managed to put the concepts in an order that makes them comprehensible to the student. In other words, he’s given this swirling mass of ideas organization. No small feat.

Then along comes Linda, who has taken Pat’s work to still higher levels with her own contributions to both the substance and the presentation. Make no mistake. Both are important if you want to be engage and empower students.

Is the Parelli system right for everyone? Probably not. But it’s a Godsend for beginners looking for a step-by-step, enjoyable, safe, and effective approach for working with their horses. Plus, among the tens of thousands of Parelli students, there is a sense of community that is hard to come by. And that, my friends, ain’t hay.

I hope you enjoy the interview.

R