I just wrapped up the ST Instructor Clinic in Brazil in July 2015 – AMAZING experience!! The Brazilian ST Trainee Instructors Victor Gueiros Freire, Marianne Van De Sande Lee and Juliana Dorneles showed great progress, not only in their journey to become the best horse trainer they can be, but also in their journey to become an inspirational teacher, who adds great value to and who makes a true difference in the lives of humans and horses.
It was so great to help not only Victor, Marianne and Ju, but also ST Mastery student Helene Ecklin, Beatriz Lefèvre and Victor's stable managers Willian Pinheiro and Afonso Da Silva in taking the next steps towards the next levels in Straightness Training during 4 intensive days.
When one teaches...
Now in teaching it's always great to experience that when one teaches, THREE learn: the student, the horse AND the teacher. But Victor, Marianne and Ju also gave lessons themselves under my supervision. And then FOUR learn :) : the student, the horse, the teacher AND the supervisor. When they were teaching, it was so great to see their interaction with their 2 and 4 legged students. It was wonderful to see how they guided their students to understandings of how to use tools, aids, cues and how to teach the exercises to a horse. It was lovely to see how they applied the art of assisting discovery in the wonderful world of Straightness Training. And they also found out: to teach is to learn twice! You’ll find out ‘the gaps’ in your own wisdom and knowledge, once you start to explain what you know to somebody else.
Lectures
Victor, Marianne and Ju also gave an interesting lecture about a didactic concept. There are many didactic concepts on how to communicate with students, how to motivate, and how to build confidence with our students. We chose three concepts:
- Marianne Van de Sande Lee gave a lecture about the levels of competence and consciousness, and how to deal with students who are unconscious/incompetent, conscious/incompetent, conscious/competent, unconscious/competent, and how to guide them to the level of unconscious/excellence.
- Ju Dorneles spoke about the 3 levels of Mastery and introduced us to the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domain and how to guide students to all three domains.
- Victor Gueiros Freire showed how to communicate with, and coach and motivate 3 types of students: the low compliant students, the high compliant students with low results and the high compliant students with high results.
Now the mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires. Well... the presentations of Victor, Marianne and Ju were a true inspiration, because they not only shared their knowledge and insights about the didactic concepts, but they also shared their valuable personal wisdom and life experience with us, so we were truly touched by their words.
Video impression
Check out this video to have an impression of how Victor, Marianne and Ju have been teaching and giving the lectures during this ST Instructor Clinic:
Great clinic
Victor did also a fantastic job in organising this clinic for the third time! Well done you and thanks so much! And special thanks to his wife Giovanna who made my favorite chocolate cake on the last day of the clinic! Victor’s horses Zidane, Labareda, Bota Fogo and Mar de Fogo where ready for the next step this clinic. Thanks to the proper education of Victor, Willian and Afonso these horses learned all the basic ST exercises in the last two years; the standstill exercises, the circle, shoulder-in, haunches-in, renvers, half pass and the pirouette. It was great to start working this clinic with the diagonalization and collection of the walk and to start doing ST at liberty! Well done Victor, Afonso and William! 
Also a warm thank you to the spectators who brought their good vibes to the clinic and who asked very interesting questions and shared their valuable insights! :) 
Among the participants was 1º Sergeant Alberto from the Mounted Police of Espirito Santo (Regimento de Polícia Montada (RPMont) da PMES) , and he wrote a short article about the clinic.
Click here for the article of 1º Sergeant Alberto from the Mounted Police >>
And last, but not least, a very special thanks to Marc Marsman for his loving support during the clinic and who is a great power behind the scenes! We are looking forward to return next year to Brazil in November 2016, and in the meantime, we wish all the Brazilian ST students good luck and enjoy your wonderful Straightness Training journey!
