PARISHVILLE — Many young readers have struggled during the pandemic and horses are helping children improve their literacy levels and develop a love for books at Parishville-Hopkinton Central School.

The program was developed during a meeting of school administrators.

 “They asked for creative ideas and immediately I thought HPR,” said Elementary Librarian Laura Zellweger.

Horse Powered Reading, or HPR, was created by Dr. Michel Pickel, a therapeutic professional with the Equine Assisted Growth And Learning Association (EAGALA) and a professor of literacy.

“Being the elementary librarian and a horse lover it seemed logical and exciting to combine the two, so I took a course with Dr. Pickel,” Zellweger said.

The idea was pitched to Superintendent Bill Collins and principal Brooke Reid, who Zellweger says were “very positive and enthusiastic.”

Zellweger launched a pilot program this summer at her Candlelite Farm in conjunction with the district Summer Scholars Program. She has 11 students total, with two or three students coming to the farm at a time weekly for two hours.

“By nature, horses are excellent teachers,” Zellweger said.

“Students are often surprised that a horse can talk to them and we often stop during a session to ‘read’ our horse. Horses communicate with their ears, eyes, mouth, body language, breathing and many other physical signs.”

PHCS reading teachers provided Zellweger with testing data showing what students needed to work on so that she could create activities to help students learn and reinforce reading skills in phonemic awareness, decoding, vocabulary, fluency and comprehension.

Each session includes an activity with the horse, and then a tack room-classroom element to reinforce the concept,” Zellweger said.

“To make a connection with a horse we have to read these physical cues and interpret them in a way that makes our horse want to partner with us and participate in an activity,” she said.

Sessions include building a “reading river” and placing items in it as symbolic obstacles to good reading. The student and the horse swim the river as the student explains their unique difficulties.

 Another day will find students lassoing words and "herding them" into pens they have built for the word family, other times the student must lead the Magic E pony around to create long vowel words.

“Painting the horses to illustrate poetry is popular,” Zellweger said. “But easily the favorite activity is just simply choosing an equine reading partner and sharing a good book.”

Zellweger received her certification as a therapeutic instructor through PATH International (Professional Association of Therapeutic Horsemanship) in 2009. Over time, her specialty and focus became Equine Assisted Learning (EAL).

“EAL is an experiential learning approach that can be used to develop life skills, educational goals, social awareness, problem solving and team building skills...just to mention a few,” Zellweger said.

The school librarian is currently working on her Equine Specialist in Mental Health and Learning (ESMHL) certification through PATH. She also breeds Morgan horses on a small scale.

Zellweger said the equine stars of Candlelite's Horse-Powered Reading program are homebred Morgans, Candlelite Lady Galadriel (Gala) and Candlelite Celeborn (Cel), a “sweet and opinionated” mule named Honky, and a pony named Danny Boy.

“Although Gala is often the horse of choice because she is so pretty, almost everyone falls in love with the mule,” she said.