FEATURE
NEW HORSE POWER FOR MOTOR CITY
Eventer-turned-schoolteacher David Silver plans an equestrian center in urban Detroit to encourage homegrown leaders and help revitalize a great American city. By CHR ISTINA KEIM
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etroit’s inner-city streets are a long way from the galloping lanes of a cross-country course, but former three-day event rider David Silver is equally at home in both. The Westchester, N.Y., native competed up to the CCI* level before taking on another daunting challenge: teaching a class of energetic fourth- and fifth-graders at Burns Elementary and Middle School on Detroit’s west side. Silver arrived there in 2012 as a 22-yearold with Teach For America, a program that places teachers in under-resourced
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and poverty-stricken districts in rural or urban areas. His two-year stint at Burns gave him a “crazy idea” for an urban equestrian center that will reclaim some of Detroit’s vacant city land and bring horses, the original horsepower, back to the Motor City to drive positive change. By any measure, Detroit is a large city. Nearly 140 square miles fall within city limits and provide a home for almost 700,000 people. But the population was close to 1.8 million in the 1950s, and the decades-long shift in demographics and changes in the local economy have left a city that is ripe with opportunity or teetering on the brink of collapse, depending on whom you talk to. Darlene Walker grew up in Detroit, and
she’s now raising her four children there. Her two youngest—daughters Shatese, 11, and Ariel, 9—attend Burns, where Darlene volunteers, and Shatese was one of Silver’s students. Darlene is frustrated, and she worries about her children’s future. “There are no resources here,” Darlene says. “It’s not just the school. There are not enough resources to help families and kids in Detroit. “Mr. Silver is great,” she adds. “To see how he interacts with the kids and how much the kids look up to him gives me such joy.” Silver forged deep bonds with his students, and at the end of his tenure, he determined that his work with them was
