instructor helping small girl riding pony

simple paths to help you

Get Started with Learning Levels

instructor helping small girl riding pony

Need a leg up?

Not sure how to implement the Learning Levels curriculum – or if it’s even the right fit for your business?

Use these tips to get the most out of our resources and Level Up your lesson program with confidence.

Step 1

Get to know the curriculum

The more familiar you are with our system, the easier it will be to identify which parts work best for you!

We’ve been developing and using Learning Levels resources since 2007, so we’ve got a LOT of materials — and we don’t recommend that you immediately try to use it all!

Instead, think of our Resource Center as a library full of teaching tools you can dip into as needed. If you plan on implementing the Levels in your own lesson program, start with a few basics (such as tracking tools, lesson plans and HorseSense teaching guides) and go from there.

Step 2

What do you want to do with Learning Levels?

No two lesson programs are exactly alike! Your business will be built around your experience, riding disciplines, local target market, facility, horses, climate, budget and goals – all of which will impact how you use our teaching tools.

Level Up your existing program

Maybe you have an established lesson program, but you want to use progressive Levels to help motivate your students and create clear expectations, and you aren’t sure where to start.

Luckily, we went through this process with our own riding school, and have helped hundreds of other businesses do the same.

Get an overview of a Learning Levels launch in this blog post, then download our Launch Kit full of checklists and helpful tips.

Start something new

Are you are a brand-new instructor, or a seasoned instructor ready to build your own business?

Get off on the right foot (or hoof!) by developing a curriculum and policies that will help both you and your students thrive.

Choose Learning Levels resources that support YOUR vision, rather than the other way around. You’ll find tons of helpful advice in the Boss Mares blog – including this post on lessons we learned over two decades in the lesson business.

Create your own curriculum

Your lesson program is unique – and your curriculum can be, too.

We’re all for instructors using the Learning Levels checklists as inspiration for a unique, fully-customized curriculum. Use the parts that work for you and change the parts that don’t!

Look over our helpful  tips for adapting our materials  — be sure to carefully read the Copyright and Caveats section! And check our Legal Stuff page to ensure that your edits fall under our copyright agreement.

Pan for gold

You absolutely DO NOT need to go all-in on the Learning Levels curriculum to use our materials!

Feel free to mine the resource library for fresh ideas, or adapt our lesson plans to suit your own program.

Print and distribute worksheets or study guide pages to your students on an as-needed basis, using the Resource Center filters to find exactly what you need.

Step 3

A few more links to get you going!

Join LLPro members in our Boss Mares group on Facebook.
Find Learning Levels ribbons,
e-books and more!
Get personalized help designing your Learning Levels program.

LLPro Membership Benefits

Not Yet a Member?

Join us to get unlimited access to ALL the time-saving resources you need to teach mounted and unmounted lessons. Sign up for an LLPro Membership - cancel at any time.
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We’ve been blessed with many talented photographers over the years: students who voluntarily stood in sweltering/ freezing arenas, capturing lifelong memories of lessons, camps and shows. We’re grateful to all of them!

One former student, Delaney Witbrod, is now a professional photographer with a gift for animal portraits – see more of her fine work here. We’re also grateful for photos of Western riding donated by LLPro instructors – particularly Bit of Pleasure Horse School and Joyful Hearts Photography!

You’ll find illustrations throughout our online courses and printed materials graciously donated by our friend Rhonda Hagy. Evan Surrusco contributes additional illustrations and handles most of our photo processing. Contact us for information about their work.

horse looking perplexed

HEADS UP!

Our website will be offline on
Thursday, July 4,
starting at 10:00 AM (EDT),
for routine maintenance.

We’ll be shined up and
ready to ride by
July 5.