Sign up for Chalkbeat Detroit’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system and Michigan education policy.
A muggy day in August marked a rite of passage for Sonia Singh: her first time taking the lead teaching a riding class.
“Stand up in your saddle for me and lean forward,” the recent Cass Technical High School graduate told a group of beginners. “You can brace your hands in the mane.”
It was day three of one of the nonprofit Detroit Horse Power’s summer camp sessions at Willowbrooke Farm in Plymouth, about a 45-minute van ride from Detroit for the students.
Singh, now 18, began participating in programs run by Detroit Horse Power as a high school freshman living in Southwest Detroit because it was the only opportunity she had to ride.
Like Singh, many middle and high school students of color say Detroit Horse Power has given them opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have – gaining access to an equestrian world often dominated by white and wealthy riders – while learning social and emotional skills, such as empathy, confidence, and resilience.
That’s by design. The nonprofit, which runs free after-school programs and summer camps for disadvantaged youth in Detroit, created a curriculum for "equine-assisted learning," an experiential approach that uses interactions with horses to develop skills like communication, problem-solving, and self-awareness.
The practice is based on the principles of social and emotional learning, an educational method developed decades ago that teaches students life skills. In recent years, conservatives have portrayed social and emotional learning as a vehicle for introducing students to progressive concepts. Research suggests that students receive a wide range of benefits from it, including improvement in academic performance.
“Detroit Horse Power is somewhat unique in our approach to horses and youth development,” said David Silver, founder and executive director of the nonprofit.
Its curriculum is based on Silver’s experiences as a former classroom teacher in Detroit and a blend of research from various fields, he said.
The program currently runs out of partner barns in southeast Michigan, which are generally at least 45 minutes away from the city. During the school year, students, who are in middle and high school, spend most of their time in classrooms at the Marygrove Conservancy doing project-based social and emotional learning.
They only get one day a month to ride and be around horses, in part due to the distance they must travel to the barns. At most, they get around 40 minutes of riding time a month.
During the school year, there are spots for up to 40 students. In the summer, around 100 students participate in camp sessions. There is a growing waitlist, Silver said.
More than 500 students have participated in Detroit Horse Power since it began a decade ago. Now, the nonprofit is poised to build the largest urban equestrian center in the U.S. around November 2026.
Other urban equestrian centers in Connecticut, New York, and Virginia offer horsemanship and riding opportunities to at-risk youth. Many offer therapeutic riding or programs for children with disabilities. Others focus on youth development, though their programming differs from Detroit Horse Power’s.
Construction recently began on Detroit Horse Power’s $14 million project on a 14-acre site on the corner of Fenkell Avenue and Linwood Street, which the nonprofit purchased from the Detroit school district. There are plans for stables for up to 17 horses, indoor and outdoor riding arenas, a bridle path, and 10,000 square feet for classrooms, offices, and community gathering space.
Philanthropic grants, donations, as well as funding from the state and Wayne County will allow the nonprofit to accept many more students, offer much more time in the saddle and around horses, and develop new learning opportunities, Silver said.
From the classroom to the barn
Silver, 35, began his teaching career in 2012 in front of a class of 52 fifth graders at Burns Elementary-Middle School on the northwest side of Detroit.
He quickly learned about the challenges in his students’ lives: exposure to gun violence, socioeconomic barriers in getting to school, and unstable housing. More than a decade later, Detroit students face the same systemic issues.
“A lot of that weighed on students’ academic performance and ability to meet grade-level standards,” Silver said.
Social and emotional learning became an important part of Silver’s classroom culture as he studied it while completing a master’s degree at Oakland University.
The concept, first introduced in the 1960s, has been widely adopted by schools in the U.S.
In a classroom, social and emotional learning practices can range from a teacher coaching a student through a calming exercise to students writing out their goals for the school year to a teacher using a discussion of reading material to encourage children to share their emotions about similar experiences.
High-quality lessons improve academic outcomes for students, according to a recent analysis from researchers at Yale University who reviewed 40 studies of such programs. Students who live in impoverished communities, in particular, may benefit from learning how to manage stress and become resilient, research shows.
Students who have strong social and emotional skills also are less likely to be chronically absent, typically defined as missing 10% or more of the school year.
In the Detroit Public Schools Community District, more than 95% of students are from low-income families, and more than 60% of students were chronically absent last school year.
As a teacher, when Silver reflected on how he had developed skills like perseverance and empathy most of the examples he came up with involved his adolescent years riding horses in Putnam County, New York.
Realizing that most of the kids in his class did not have the opportunity to learn from horses, he set out to create Detroit Horse Power in 2014.
Learning personal growth from horses
Lessons at Detroit Horse Power center around teaching students “PERCS traits,” or perseverance, empathy, responsible risk-taking, confidence, and self-control — all of which align with social and emotional learning.
In May, during a visit to Bloomfield Open Hunt country club, about a dozen young people gathered in a circle with Silver and several other adults to share their goals for the day.
One student said she wanted to use self-control to perfect her posting trot that day. Another said she wanted to build the confidence to canter for the first time.
A few months later at summer camp, the students used a “feelings wheel,” a visual tool that can help people identify and communicate a range of emotions. Later that day, the campers set a goal for the week.
“It doesn’t have to be camp related,” said E’lese Copeland, a counselor and senior at Michigan Great Lakes Virtual Academy, an online charter school. “It could be something like a personal goal, like better sleep or getting up early because school is going to be starting back for some people.”
Completing barn chores, like mucking out dirty horse stalls, teaches kids about the hard work required to care for horses. Grooming horses and getting them ready to ride allows students to more deeply connect with the animals.
When students meet in groups in a classroom, they connect the PERCS traits and their barn experiences with a project-based learning assignment.
For example, the students talk about how confident they feel in the saddle. Then the students give a presentation on how they channel that confidence from being around horses into other aspects of their lives.
There is some evidence the curriculum is effective. A 2019 report commissioned by Detroit Horse Power and completed by the University of Michigan’s Center for Education Design, Evaluation, & Research, found the 19 kids included in the analysis reported gains in all of the PERCS traits.
Another assessment commissioned by Detroit Horse Power and completed by the Weikart Center for Youth Program Quality found students who were considered to have low social-emotional skills based on a survey showed improvement over time.
Silver said there are plans to track other metrics in the future, including students’ academic performance, attendance, and behavior in school.
Le’Airra Jones, a 19-year-old who has participated in the program for nine years, said that in addition to developing social and emotional skills, she found a sense of belonging and a community she can trust.
In her family, Jones said she feels like the “odd one out.”
“But I think that Detroit Horse Power has given me a family – or people that I want to be close to, and people I can rely on, and just always want to be around,” she said.
Finding purpose – and a future career – in the program
Many kids in Detroit may not ever consider riding an option, said Singh, the recent Cass Tech graduate. In addition to financial and geographical barriers, racism and exclusionary practices have pushed many people of color out of the equestrian world.
“Just being in these spaces in a now primarily white-dominated sport is very important to show the generations coming up that it’s okay to be in this space, even if you may feel a bit uncomfortable,” said Sophia Graddick, a recent graduate of The School at Marygrove.
Students like Graddick, Singh, and Jones say Detroit Horse Power made careers as veterinarians seem more accessible to them as women of color. In the U.S., nearly 90% of veterinarians are white.
“Hopefully it inspires other Black girls like me to know that it’s OK to step into those fields where a lot of people don’t look like them,” Jones said.
Jones is currently attending Oakland Community College and taking prerequisites for vet school. She is the first in her family to attend college.
Singh, who graduated high school and was one of Detroit Horse Power’s advanced riding students, said her time in the program made her realize her calling to become a large animal veterinarian.
“When I started high school, I knew that I wanted to do something in the medical field, but I didn’t know where I wanted that focus to be,” she said. “Being in Detroit Horse Power, I eventually learned I want to be a large animal vet, that I want to be around horses consistently every day, and do that for a living.”
Without the program, Singh said she probably would not have considered that career path.
The Sunday after teaching the riding class at Willowbrooke, Singh moved into Michigan State University. In the fall, she began studying animal science with an equine concentration.
Hannah Dellinger covers Detroit schools for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.