Following Your Passion
We all have a passion, some of us more than one. If we’re lucky we find it when we’re young.
My passion is horses, and it was alive and burning in me at a young age. Growing up in the suburbs of San Bruno, just south of San Francisco, there were no horses around, and no opportunity to ride. Instead, I read every horse book I could get my hands on, watched each episode of Fury and My Friend Flicka on TV, and collected every horse picture, model and magazine that crossed my path. I made saddles, bridles and show jumping courses for my dog in the backyard. If I was lucky, a few times each summer I would have a chance to ride a real horse at a dude ranch or farm.
While still in elementary school my family moved to Canada. My parents bought a house in Ottawa, Ontario and I quickly made friends with Sue, a girl who lived a few doors down the street. She and I were both horse crazy and we organized our own horse school. We taught each other about horses, taking turns being teacher and pupil. We wrote on a chalkboard, and gave each other lectures and tests.
After graduating from high school, I decided to pursue my passion for horses by taking riding lessons at a stable about a mile from my parents’ house. A few months later I began working with horses at a small, private hunter and jumper stable outside of Montreal, in Quebec. Humber College in Toronto started a horsemanship program at this time and I attended the two-year program, graduating with an Honours Degree in Horsemanship in the mid-seventies.
I continued to work with horses for several years and gradually came to realize that there really wasn’t much of a future for me in the horse industry; I didn’t want to be a groom for the rest of my life. And so I left.
But the love of horses never really left me. Years later, when my daughter was in elementary school, an opportunity came to once again return to a life with horses. We moved to a riding/boarding stable, and my daughter was in heaven! She too was a horse crazy girl, and in school, she struggled with math.
One evening, while helping her with math homework, I could see that the assigned question could easily be changed to reference the real world of horses. Instead of ‘Sally receives an allowance of $35 each month. How much money does she receive in a year?’ I wrote, ‘Sally pays $250 each month to self-board her pony at a nearby farm. How much does it cost to board her pony for the entire year?’
While the mathematics of the question remained the same, my daughter gained a sense of the actual cost to board a pony per month and for an entire year—and she was motivated to find the answer!
Suddenly, I began seeing math everywhere in my work with horses.
In my mind I saw a workbook about math in the real-world of horses, and began writing pages of questions. I tried to interest a publisher. Nothing happened, and finally, I had to let it slide—but just to the back burner. I always knew it was a good idea.
There’s plenty of math and science in the real-world of horses, and if horse crazy kids could just see it, math and science would simply be another means to learn as much about horses as they can.
I remember how strong that desire to learn is. And just like when Sue and I had our horse school all those many years ago, in spring 2011 work on a new horse school began, and this time it had a name, Horse Lover’s Math.
Now, Horse Lover’s Math (HLM) is a website for kids ages 8 and up devoted to horses and math. HLM follows the math curriculum guidelines for grades 4 to 6, and creates math questions, drawn from the real-world of horses to meet as many of the curriculum goals as possible. In January 2015, the Level 1 Workbook became available.
After all these years I’m back following my passion, allowing it to lead me forward. Like a good horse knowing its way home, I can drop the reins and enjoy the ride.
About The Author
Deborah Stacey lives in British Columbia, Canada. She has created – and runs – a website called Horse Lover’s Math. Through this site, she enables students who share her passion for horses to more effectively learn important skills in mathematics. She has developed interesting curriculum materials for this and has also created a Horse Lover’s Math Club! To learn more . . . .
- Visit her website at Horse Lover’s Math. You may also contact Deborah through this site.
- Listen to her guest appearance on AfterMath Adventures on KRZK FM (106.3) either by listening (or streaming) ‘live’ on Sunday afternoon Sep 13 at 4 p.m. CDT, or by podcast any time after that. Visit AfterMathAdventures and click Listen Now or visit the podcast at the bottom of the page.
