text: Maverick Riding was born as Austin Lessons and Tutoring, LLC, August 5th, 2012. When Joan Marie MacCoy, owner, founded AL&T, she used principles founded in Community-Based Management Theory to run and operate this very humble business that has made strong efforts to be present in the local community. Coming from North Carolina, MacCoy didn’t have any idea what the local community needed, or what problems they sought to solve. Rather than forming a company that offered specific services and creating marketing campaigns to convince the public why said services would be useful, she established four fundamental services that all relied on good communication and strong education principles. As a strong proponent of integrated learning, whenever and wherever possible, MacCoy overlapped these services.
  In it’s beginning, AL&T served the public by offering Special Needs Habilitation Technician Services, Core Subject Tutoring, Horseback Riding Lessons on the Trail and Foreign Language Immersion. In one example of cross-over, MacCoy spent a semester training a struggling Spanish-speaking kindergartner who was resisting interacting with her English-speaking peers and teachers. MacCoy used the vehicle of riding, and a laid-back atmosphere of nature and the trail to casually make English learning fun. In another instance, a non-verbal spectrum child was brought to MacCoy for riding lessons outside of the arena, with sensory trails as only nature can provide. The horses have been used to teach Spanish, Chinese, English. They’ve helped provide an incentive for struggling students. They have stood strong while thousands of riders have enjoyed getting a taste of what real riding is all about– no monotonous circles in an arena on a tired horse and no dead-head follow-along un-spirited trail pony.
  Over time and through endless conversations with clients about what areas of community education were lacking, AL&T shifted to focus more and more on riding and less on core subject tutoring. While we’ve shifted away from this particular facet, we have continued to serve individuals with unique foreign language immersion programs, “extra curriculars” such as art, yoga and music as they tie into horse and western culture and history, and of course we have refined, tested, and re-refined our riding lesson program.
  We are so happy to be a part of the Austin Metropolitan Community, and we have so much enjoyed hearing all of your suggestions, hopes and dreams. We want to continue to work with you to provide services that are dynamic, bold and engaging.
  As always, if you have any “you-may-not-believe-this” idea, don’t hesitate to run it by us. That is what we are all about. Serving you. Serving our horses. And living the American Dream.