NSA believes the important, positive identity forming and community building benefits of allowing students to share their experiences and growth online outweigh the risks, and Heather and Danny will be delving into this topic before a gathering of professionals in the industry. NSA is proud to continue sharing our cutting-edge practices to help improve student services in all programs.
New Summit Academy and our Young Adult Bridge Program are collaborating on a presentation at the annual National Association of Therapeutic Schools and Programs (NATSAP) conference in Tucson, Arizona later this month. Executive Director Heather Tracy and Danny Recio, Program Director for the Bridge, are working together to present “To Surf or Not to Surf? The Benefits and Risks of Allowing Internet Use in Therapeutic Programs.”
NSA believes the important, positive identity forming and community building benefits of allowing students to share their experiences and growth online outweigh the risks, and Heather and Danny will be delving into this topic before a gathering of professionals in the industry. NSA is proud to continue sharing our cutting-edge practices to help improve student services in all programs.
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NSA’s Academics are known throughout the industry as one of the most innovative, rigorous and creative programs out there. Our success with engaging all learning styles and developing academic skills is due in large part to our dedicated teachers implementing project- and problem-based learning in their classrooms. This learning model begins with students and teachers collaborating to develop a project to be completed or a problem to be solved by the end of the semester. Teachers then develop steps to achieve this goal which incorporate the semester’s learning objectives, so that they are met as our students progress through the project. This learning model helps to develop student ownership of their learning and allows students to place tasks and lessons into a greater context, improving student engagement. At the end of each semester, our community celebrates these projects at the Academic Fair, where students share the results of their efforts with their peers and staff. This semester, students are working on various projects, including:
Each quarter at New Summit Academy begins with students collaborating with their Individual Goal Planning team to develop goals and steps for success. Students meet one-on-one with advisors to review their SCAFA scores as a foundation for these goals. SCAFA – Self, Community and Future – is NSA’s own student growth tracking system, developed over a decade of working with our students. Our innovative system uses day-to-day student engagement to measure growth in Relationships, Social Skills, Executive Functioning, Resilience, Identity, and many more areas. This information is converted into goals at the start of each quarter, and Advisors from Academics, Personal Growth and Experiential Education will continually follow up with goals and steps to help ensure student success. What a way to prepare for the first day of classes! Eight proud program graduates (five of them also high school grads) recently embarked on their culminating Aventura at New Summit Academy: summiting Chirripo, the highest peak in Costa Rica. Their journeys began more than one year ago, when they participated in the first of their Integrated Aventuras, learning about and serving the Costa Rican community which would become their second home. Throughout the following months, these students have worked hard, developed the skills they need for success, and now move forward to college or to finish high school. On Friday, December 16th, New Summit Academy celebrated their efforts at our Winter Graduation Ceremony. Congratulations to our graduates, we look forward to hearing about your many upcoming successes! Classes at New Summit Academy engage students through project-based learning: a collaborative, hands-on method of meeting learning objectives while developing student ownership of academics. Teachers and students collaborate in setting an end-goal – the completion of a project or solving of a problem each semester. By working together to set goals, teachers and students are able to create an atmosphere of curiosity and inquiry, which NSA has found provides the context students need to drive learning. This December, our community celebrated the students’ efforts in project-based learning at our biannual Academic Fair. Student presented their projects in front of peers, teachers, and our NSA families, showcasing the results of their learning this semester. This semester’s projects included:
Updates like these make all of the efforts worth it:Hi, Kelly,
Life is fantastic right now! I am settled in to my dorm (my roommate is awesome) and have had two days of classes (already five hours spent on homework). I have met up with a lot of my old friends and I am hanging out with another NSA grad often, he’s doing great as well. We went on the same backpacking trip and saw a bear less than 15 feet away, walking toward us! It was a really fun trip and we had perfect weather with a full moon and blue skies. I had a full time job this past summer as a dish washer with 50-hour weeks (roughly). I managed to go to three concerts through all of that: Rebelution, Guns n Roses, and Blink 182. At the Blink 182 concert, I caught the drummer’s drumstick! I was sick right when I moved back (figures) but it only lasted a week and I’ve been healthy ever since. There already parties almost every day up here and I’ve managed to stay sober so far so that’s good, still having fun though. I have no idea what I want to study but I think that is a good thing. I feel comfortable on campus and around all these people, everyone is really friendly up here. I know I’ve said this before, but in times of reflection, I think I should say again that I am forever grateful for NSA and how it helped me turn my life around. Without it I would not be in college right now and maybe not even have a high school diploma. Then there’s all the emotional knowledge and wisdom I’ve gained, but I won’t go on about that (although it’s really important/advantageous). But the most important skills I learned at NSA were how to live with people, solve conflict, and open up as a person. I am so comfortable around everyone here, and it helps others be comfortable around me. It’s quite an experience to look back on, and I wouldn’t change a thing if I could. Thanks for all your hard work. P.S. Feel free to share this with people and I will write a letter to Martin ‘cause he deserves one and he helped me so much.
Preparing students for a successful transition from New Summit Academy is a crucial step in helping them succeed in the next stages of their lives. A huge part of this help comes from their work within the NSA Transition Program - an intensive process which engages students, families, and a "Transition Team" in planning and preparing for life after New Summit. The planning begins well before students' final quarters, when they work with their families to create drafts of their Transition Plans, which will be refined and edited for months before final approval. These comprehensive plans include expectations about education, finances, family and house rules, socializing, and more. Throughout the Transition Program, students also engage in life-skills workshops of their choosing, including topics such as College Level Skills, Planning for and Preparing a Meal, Independent Travel, Budgeting and Finances, and Sex and Dating.
"Therapeutic Educational Experiences" (similar version published in We Are NATSAP newsletter October 2016)
by Dr. Heather Tracy, Ed.M., Ed.D., Executive Director at New Summit Academy & The Bridge – Costa Rica During the admissions process at therapeutic boarding schools, there is no shortage of educational symptoms listed: Grades declined. Skipped classes. Suspended. Fell into a negative peer group at school. Bullied. Whatever the case may be, what happens at school is often framed as a symptom of a deeper clinical issue that is the true reason for seeking treatment. What is often not highlighted is just how integrated an adolescent’s educational and personal development experiences actually are. The up side to all of this is that education does not solely serve to alert us to symptoms needing clinical attention, but rather educational experiences can be important facilitators of healing and growth as well. What could be more therapeutic than...
Each and every one of these examples is representative of how New Summit Academy is not just filling up students’ days with scores on tests and credits on transcripts. NSA's teachers and administrators work tirelessly to create “therapeutic” educational experiences for our students. We do this believing that someday soon other schools will catch on to the idea that therapeutic education is not just healing what has “gone wrong” for our students; instead, it is what education is meant to be at its core – an experience that facilitates learning about ourselves, each other, and the world around us so that we might meaningfully contribute in our own unique and positive way.
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