Four Spring Ridge students smiling with arms around each other

OVERVIEW

The Spring Ridge Philosophy

Students need a supportive, engaging, and challenging environment to practice new skills and take healthy risks to achieve their therapeutic goals.

We Offer a Multi-Faceted Therapeutic Program

Our Goal

Our goal is to assist our students in identifying and defining their values, beliefs, and opinions independently of what they think others want from them. This foundation of success and self-esteem reinforces students to make choices that affirm self-respect while enrolled at Spring Ridge Academy and as they transition into young adulthood.

These choices include maintaining healthy, productive relationships with family and peers, facing and coping with addictions and challenges, completing and excelling in their education, and being honest with themselves and others.

Even if a student should veer off course, a graduate of Spring Ridge Academy can regroup, ask for help and continue growing.

While our students present with a variety of diagnoses we find that often the issues that need to be addressed fall into one of eight categories:

  • Attachment / Adoption Issues
  • Body Image / Eating Disorders
  • Conflict / Defiance
  • Depression / Anxiety
  • Experimentation with Drugs & Alcohol
  • Focus / Motivation Issues
  • Grief & Loss
  • Self Harm
  • Social Difficulties / Negative Peer Groups
  • Trauma

Spring Ridge Academy is a therapeutic boarding school targeting biological adolescent females, ages 13–17 in grades 9–12.

The young people that Spring Ridge supports are bright, talented, and highly creative individuals who are struggling to manage their lives. Often these are young people involved in a variety of risky and/or addictive behaviors that are sabotaging their relationships and affecting their academic careers. The Spring Ridge student is very capable and talented but has lacked the self-esteem and self-discipline needed to be successful.

Therapy, education, community, and family work together to create a complete program.

Therapy

At Spring Ridge Academy, we believe in the inherent worth of each individual we serve. Therefore, we approach each young person with respect and genuine care for her well-being and personal growth.

The therapeutic philosophy of Spring Ridge includes a combination of developmentally-based approaches, a trauma-informed lens, and family systems therapy to create a comprehensive scope of treatment.

Each student has a treatment team working with them to integrate their therapy work into their everyday lives. This team includes their family, a primary therapist, community life director, academic mentor, and community coaches. In addition, if the family has an educational consultant, that person is also part of the team.

Academics

We believe that in order for our students to succeed in life they must learn to succeed in the classroom. Our curriculum is designed to assist students who have struggled or fallen behind, as well as to challenge and prepare even the most dedicated student for future academic endeavors.

The core of a Spring Ridge Academy education is the learning process. The academic environment at Spring Ridge nurtures young women to become confident, competent, and responsible students. while gaining the necessary skills to engage in and enjoy the life-long process of learning.

We place an emphasis on writing skills, critical thinking, problem solving, and communication. Our program offers a classroom environment that is small and structured to promote individual accountability, creativity and integrity.

Community

Through a carefully designed community, we are able to provide a nurturing environment that encourages students to be accountable for themselves while recognizing the importance and value of their relationships. The environment and peer culture at Spring Ridge Academy promote emotional safety through honest, direct, and caring communication.

Students and staff at Spring Ridge take pride and ownership of their community and have built a welcoming and cohesive home. Each aspect of our community is designed to maximize progress and development for both the individual and the community as a whole.

four students sitting at round table in a library playing cards
daughter laying her head on mother's right shoulder

Family

Spring Ridge Academy works closely with families to ensure that everyone is moving forward. Our early goal is to help parents to begin to parent as partners. At Spring Ridge, we strive to address the unconscious but repetitious patterns of behavior inherent in families who have had difficulty over some period immediately.  We work to change the parents’ approach to the student to one of understanding and attunement tempered by firm limitations and love.  We work with the students to begin to see their parents as allies and resources.

With a strong emphasis on communication skills, the family will begin to experience stability and satisfaction in their relationships with one another.  Once the parental relationship with the client is on firmer and more positive ground, we will fold in the siblings, if any, of the student and truly work toward authentic connection within the entire family.

We help your adolescent find her own sense of self, learn to love herself, and to make choices that support change, success and excellence.