Academic Achievement Meets Emotional Growth at Excel Academy

You've recognized that your teen needs help. And you think a therapeutic boarding school might be the answer. But you're concerned that such a program might interfere with your teen's academic progress. So what do you do? The answer is actually more straightforward than you might imagine.

If you find the right therapeutic boarding school for your troubled teen, your child will get the help he/she needs without having to sacrifice academic progress. In fact, at therapeutic boarding programs like Texas-based Excel Academy, a rigorous academic curriculum is an integral part of the treatment process.

"We firmly believe that if we're going to help students recover from the behavioral or emotional problems they're facing, we also need to help them find a path for future success," says Duncan McGinnis, Academic Director at Excel Academy.

"It doesn't do any good to prepare a teen academically for college if they haven't developed the healthy decision-making and personal skills to get through their freshman year," he explains. "We want to challenge our students academically but also put them in a position where they know how to make the right choices."

As a result, Excel Academy offers a curriculum that combines demanding academic coursework with a focus on personal investment, responsibility and behavior.

"Students are expected to perform above and beyond, and there is a very heavy emphasis on written communication at every level, all the way down to English I," McGinnis says.

"We expect students to master and become good writers and we also assign a fairly heavy load of homework to students each day, but we also work very diligently to avoid grade inflation," he adds.

That means a student's success at Excel Academy is based on very real personal effort and achievement. When a student earns an A, they know they have had to work very hard to earn it.

But a student's academic accomplishment is also balanced with Excel Academy's focus on healthy, responsible behavior – in other words, the building of the whole student.

"We put a premium on the two biggest components of our grading system," McGinnis explains. "Tests and behavior. A student who thinks they can skate through on tests and then behave inappropriately in class will find their grades may not be what they expect."

"Excel Academy takes a very holistic approach to each teen," he continues. "In a class period, teachers are interacting with students, talking with them and trying to get them to engage in each topic, so they have a good idea of the work a student has put into it – and their mastery of the material."

"If we give a test and we know a particular student has demonstrated that mastery in class but has learning issues that make it difficult to write, we can take that mastery into consideration – and instead we can work with the student on their writing skills without sacrificing the student's grade."

45-minute class periods and a school year comprised of three 24-week semesters (approx.18 months) also gives Excel Academy students the opportunity to move through the material at a manageable pace without feeling overwhelmed. According to McGinnis, the three-semester program also helps students who may have fallen behind as a result of low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, substance-abuse, family problems or other concerns get back on track.

"Since the program is 18 months, students can spend the first semester catching up, then the two additional semesters getting – and staying – on track, so that they can return home at grade level," he explains. "In three semesters we can catch them up, bring them along and by the time they leave us have them fully caught up – often with a GPA that has been significantly repaired."

Best of all, because a student's improvement in self-esteem at Excel Academy is based on real achievement, students leave with a healthy sense of their own abilities. Says McGinnis, "at the end of the grading period – or their time here – they can look back and say, ‘wow, I've done things I never thought I could do.'"

For more information about Excel Academy or therapeutic boarding programs, call (866) 870-4979.

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