Local Students Volunteer at Equamore
Learning to Serve
Students get hands-on experience with their subject matter, and serve the community at the same time
By Paris Achen
- Malia Masonheimer, 17, leads Taz out of the arena after a demonstration of horsemanship by Medford Opportunity High School students in Ashland. The students were wrapping up a class that combines English with a service project working with horses. Mail Tribune / Jim Craven
Mail Tribune
June 04, 2010 6:05 AM
English class isn’t often associated with training a rescued horse, but in Stacy Ulrey’s English class at Medford Opportunity High School, students volunteer each Thursday to do just that at Ashland’s Equamore Foundation.
The weekly activity is part of the alternative high school’s growing focus on service learning as a way to immediately use information they read about in class and to give them an incentive to attend classes, said Principal Guy Tutland.
“What we’ve found over the last three years is academic content integrated with service learning has been very effective with our students,” Tutland said. The campus also offers a math class combined with projects for Habitat for Humanity, which builds houses for low-income families.
Students in Ulrey’s English class go to the foundation’s stables each Thursday to groom and train the horses, which were previously given up by their owners, abused, abandoned or neglected.
To make the volunteer activity fit in with English class, Ulrey asked students to read manuals, books and magazines about horses, such as the novel, “Chosen by a Horse,” about a rescued horse.
