Emotional Growth Boarding Schools

Options for students who have not succeeded in traditional schools settings, due to emotional/behavioral hurdles now include; therapeutic wilderness programs, therapeutic boarding schools, residential treatment centers, and emotional growth boarding schools. This post will talk about emotional growth boarding schools.

Emotional growth boarding schools offer structured college preparatory programs and focus on emotional development and personal growth but do not provide the intensive treatment services offered by therapeutic boarding schools or residential treatment centers. While these schools typically provide some special education services for youths who have learning differences, these schools may not be appropriate for students whose disabilities make college in infeasible goal.

Typical emotional growth boarding schools cater to students struggling with a mix behavioral, emotional, and mental health issues. Typical students have a history of academic and personal performance; in traditional school settings they may have acted out and posed behavioral challenges. Many students who enroll in emotional growth boarding schools resemble students who attend alternative high schools.

Emotional growth schools are similar to traditional boarding schools in some respects, with their structured and supervised daily schedules, afternoon and weekend activities, cultural events, and athletics. However, unlike a more typical boarding school, an emotional growth boarding school strives to create a milieu that provides the structure and support struggling teens may need to take responsibility for their actions, develop self-awareness, and cope with their special challenges.

Some emotional growth boarding schools offer group and individual therapy; others arrange for students to receive counseling from a therapist in the local community. Emotional growth boarding schools that do not provide on-site group treatment may instead run peer support, self-exploration, and psycho educational therapy groups. For example, students may gather for regularly scheduled staff-led discussions about healthy relationship, sobriety, sexuality, and personal responsibility or conflict resolution and problem-solving skills. These schools actively provide students with emotional support and guidance; students receive frequent messages that their contributions are valued and that they are important members to the community. At the same time the schools hold students accountable for their choices and behavior, providing structured, ethically administered discipline and ongoing feedback about the student's coping skills and the effects of the student's behavior on others.

Faculty and counselors may use naturally occurring experiences and events in the classroom and dormitory to help students improve their self-awareness, as well as their decision-making, problem-solving, and interpersonal skills. Some emotional growth boarding schools follow a traditional academic calendar year; others operate year round.