Activities at Therapeutic Boarding Schools Create Well-Rounded Teens
By Jess Clarke
Teens who attend therapeutic boarding schools don’t stay in the classroom and therapy sessions all day. Participation in a range of extracurricular activities helps adolescents broaden their skills, develop competence, learn teamwork, and feel a sense of accomplishment. From choir, dance, and music to fencing, lacrosse, and wrestling, students have an array of choices to help reinforce a healthy, well-rounded life.
At the Oakley School in Utah, winter brings the treats and challenges of snowboarding and skiing. At New Leaf Academy, a private boarding school for girls ages 10 to 14 in Hendersonville, N.C., students are involved with sports and other programs year-round. As part of New Leaf’s holistic approach, the staff believes it’s important to integrate non-academic activities into the girls’ schedules to nurture balanced lives.
“There’s a three-legged stool metaphor we use at New Leaf. Academics, sports, and therapy must have the same focus and the same respect as to the part they play in helping girls get better,” executive director Cat Jennings says. “It’s a healthy body, healthy mind kind of thing.”
New Leaf’s extracurricular offerings and parenting programs have helped to reduce the average length of stay to 14 to 24 months.
“Our job is to show girls that life, to be really lived fully, is to be able to run, think, and feel. If we can provide something that allows them every day to play and experience those three things, we’re doing our job. Any time you think that one or two legs of the stool are any more important, you’re under-serving your kids,” Jennings says.
New Leaf Academy Girls Become Team Players
New Leaf Activities Director, Kelly Jones, has broadened the school’s offerings of after-school activities and interscholastic sports, and girls are opting in and shaping up. Participation has increased to nearly 100 percent in the past year. Girls may choose between three and five after-school activities every day, including swimming, soccer, bowling, horseshoes, tag games, jumping rope, field hockey, and tennis. Some students are involved in walking and running clubs, and some girls run competitively in community events.
Girls at the New Leaf therapeutic boarding school learn how to be team players. “They get the opportunity to find something they like to do,” Jones says, “and to try these things in a secure and safe environment where they know the other kids aren’t going to make fun of them if they mess up.”
Most girls also participate in competitive sports, such as soccer, volleyball, basketball, softball, or 5-K racing, against local private schools. “These girls are learning how to win and lose, and how to identify the aspects of sportsmanship like how you support each other. Look at all the social learning that’s happening, and no one’s holding class,” Jennings says.
Minibike Program Helps Teens Learn Responsibility
The National Youth Project Using Minibikes, or NYPUM, offers girls a different kind of class. In the 12-week incentive program, students earn minibike-riding time based on meeting weekly goals they set with a New Leaf counselor.
Girls learn to do safety checks on the bikes, how to operate the bikes, and how to ride over obstacles and on steep terrain, and they learn the rules of riding together in a group. “The self-esteem is huge when you master your clutch and your gas at the same time,” Jones says.
NYPUM has helped some girls with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) learn to focus better, and the course can ease depression, anxiety, social phobias, and poor self-image. “This is just another exciting way for girls to gain an accomplishment and challenge themselves to do things perhaps they never envisioned themselves doing,” Jennings says.
Fencing Encourages Critical Thinking and Strategizing
Most girls probably never envisioned themselves fencing, either, but at New Leaf Academy’s private school for girls they do it every week. Sometimes there’s enough interest to organize a separate fencing club.
“I want to bring critical thinking and strategy into their world,” says Jennings, who was a fencer in high school. “I like to refer to it as physical chess because fencing really is about gauging and taking measure of your opponent and provoking them to do what you want them to do so you can use your greatest strengths against them.”
Learning to master the stances and sword work of fencing teaches self-discipline, and helps preteen girls develop motor skills, balance, coordination, and reaction time. As a more individualized activity, fencing appeals to girls who don’t like team sports. “The physicality of it is pretty intense for an activity that doesn’t look like it moves all that fast,” Jennings says.
Yoga Useful for Reducing Stress and Anxiety
If fencing doesn’t peak the girls’ curiosity, weekly yoga classes at New Leaf offer girls an opportunity to really slow down and relax. As another non-competitive activity, yoga helps students with stress reduction and self-discipline and is useful with anxiety and distraction issues.
“The meditation and relaxation that come with yoga are specifically useful to our age group of distractible, impulsive girls,” Jennings says, “as well as our girls who really struggle to manage anxiety in multiple settings.”
Some New Leaf girls enjoy yoga so much the staff plans a field trip off campus so students may practice yoga in a different setting.
For girls who like music, New Leaf Academy offers a music program on request. The music program includes a vocal component and instruction in drums, guitar, and piano. A theater piece may also be added.
Jess Clarke is a freelance writer and editor based in Asheville, N.C.